


The Dead Bury Their Dead

by Jezunya



Series: (More Than) Flesh and Bones [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Britpicked, Chapter lengths vary drastically, Explicit Language, M/M, Mildly graphic field surgery, POV Alternating, Post Reichenbach, Present Tense, Sentence Structure Abuse, Sherlock's return, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Ideation, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie-related violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 47
Words: 78,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a terrifying new epidemic sweeps the planet, killing millions and bringing millions more back from the dead, it’s all John can do to keep Harry and himself safe, all he can do to cling to life and sanity as the world crumbles around them – while, on the other side of the globe, a certain consulting detective abandons everything he’s worked for in a desperate bid to return home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unending thanks to my sister and beta-reader, glasscannon, who has continued to hold my hand and listened to all of my whining throughout this long, long process, who has offered invaluable advice and edits time and time again, and who, somehow, I'm convinced, is really to blame for this. 
> 
> And the deepest gratitude to loki-feels, Britpicker extraordinaire and the reason I can dare to post in a British fandom rather than curling up on the floor in a little ball of fear and nerves at the very idea.
> 
> **Check out[this gorgeous cover](http://archiveofourown.org/works/768531) made by [catonspeed](http://archiveofourown.org/users/catonspeed/)!!**

  
_I begged you to hear me,_   
_There's more than flesh and bones._   
_Let the dead bury their dead,_   
_They will come out in droves._   
_Take the spade from my hands_   
_And fill in the holes you've made._   


“Thistle and Weeds”  
Mumford & Sons

  


It starts with a few odd little news reports out of Mexico and the United States. They’re the type of things that inevitably filter up from local news into the national and international stratospheres. There are whispers on the internet, paranoid blogs and chat rooms, the fringes of society crowing that they know what’s happening, they know, they _know_.

No one pays them much attention, of course. No one credible. It’s just gang violence, or drugs, PCP, cocaine, whatever you like. It explains the strange behaviour, the attacks, the seeming invulnerability to pain. No one really thinks anything of it. No one sane, no one rational. No one thinks it’s at all strange when a survivor of one such attack in Florida gets on a plane, ending her Christmas holiday early for obvious reasons, and flies back to good old London. No one seems to see any connection when gang and drug-related violence then take a sharp upswing in the UK.

No one at the surgery where John is working sees anything really amiss when a man is brought in with a horrible fever, delirious, shaking, eyes bloodshot and temperature spiking wildly. He’d been bit by something, some kind of animal that had left a ragged tear in his flesh, a day or two past now. For the most part, his symptoms seem to just be a bad flu. It is only late January, so it’s not as though influenza is out of the ordinary at this time of year. Could just be bad luck, getting bit by a dog or something and then the flu on top of that. They run blood tests, prepare to treat for rabies, go through all the usual paces to stabilize him – but after just a few short hours, the man is dead.

John is devastated. He’s not lost a patient in years, not since there were bullets whizzing past his head in the middle of the godforsaken deserts of Afghanistan, and certainly not to something as simple as the seasonal flu. He washes up and goes back to his office and sits behind his desk with his head in his hands. He tries to get his breath back, though he’s no more successful now than at any of the other times he’s tried in the last seven months.

An hour later, as the body is being prepared for transport to the mortuary, the man’s eyes slide open again. One of the attending nurses is killed and the other maimed before anyone manages to take the man down with the emergency fire axe. They call the police, who make some noise about reporting the incident to the Department of Health, and so it’s hardly a surprise when several black, windowless vans roll up in front of the building a short time later and a platoon of stony-faced government types jump out to cordon off the area.

John has to smother the surprisingly sharp stab of pain under his sternum when he is simply shuffled out with the rest of the civilians. There is no dark sedan waiting for him outside, no answers, no secret messages.

They are all checked over for wounds and infection by the government employees, and the two casualties from the attack are shuttled off along with the dead patient for treatment and examination in some undisclosed location while the rest of them are released with several strong suggestions that they not discuss what happened. John limps home, makes himself a mug of tea, settles in to read the newspaper. And he can’t help it: his eyes still look for the suspiciously understated articles, the ones about death and destruction, about the dark things that most people shy away from but that he used to run full-tilt toward, chasing billowing coattails down back alleys and over rooftops.

It is thus that he reluctantly finds three separate articles: one about the unprecedented spike in flu rates this season; one about what the paper calls _another_ unexplained killing, possibly gang related though Scotland Yard seems baffled by it; and one other that vaguely discusses several violent attacks in hospitals, patients suddenly turning on their doctors, nurses, family and friends. Each of the articles makes note of official comments from the government, all of which essentially boil down to, ‘It’s under control. Go about your business.’ It occurs to him that he’s seen more articles like this, peppered throughout the newsprint for several weeks now, none of them as isolated an incident as they try to pretend they are.

John folds the paper, sets it aside, and reminds himself that he is _not_ a consulting detective – no matter how troubling the evidence is beginning to look, and no matter how his gut clenches and his eyes burn at the mere thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He hasn’t heard his little brother’s voice in nearly eight months, but even the slowest imbecile would be able to read the tension therein._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks be to my beta and big sis glasscannon, to my lovely Britpicker loki-feels, and to YOU for reading! <3

“Mycroft.”

The elder Holmes allows one eyebrow to quirk, the only outward show of surprise permitted on his face. “We have protocol for a reason, you know,” he says, peevish.

“I’ve seen the news.”

He hasn’t heard his little brother’s voice in nearly eight months, but even the slowest imbecile would be able to read the tension therein.

“There are other matters more deserving of your attention at the moment,” Mycroft replies pointedly.

“There was an _attack_ ,” Sherlock snarls into the phone, “at the _surgery_ on _Plainsborough_.”

“He’s _fine_ ,” Mycroft says. “Go back to work.”

The only response he receives is the sound of the handset being slammed violently down.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you Friday! :3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Harry is his family, the only family he has left, and so when she grabs the front of his jumper and uses her Big Sister Voice to tell him to get in the fucking car right the fuck now, he does it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, and to those who don't, happy ~~Penis~~ Friday! :D

Harry is the one to save his life, as it happens. If not for her insistence, John would have stayed in London ‘til the bitter end, would have volunteered with the medical teams to treat the sick, or with the police and military forces trying, vainly, to contain the ever-growing numbers of undead that walk the city streets.

But Harry is his family, the only family he has left, and so when she grabs the front of his jumper and uses her Big Sister Voice to tell him to get in the fucking car _right the fuck now_ , he does it. They take a few changes of clothes each, blankets, all the water bottles and dried food they can find, and all of John's illegally stockpiled ammunition. Harry has brought her family photo albums from her flat, and when she helps John throw his things into the boot of the car he sees that she somehow found the picture that he keeps in the top drawer of his desk. She slips it in between the pages of the topmost album on the stack and then looks up at John like she’s daring him to protest. He swallows hard and doesn’t quite nod, and Harry closes the boot with a kind of firm finality.

Getting out of the city is slow, but is actually the easiest part. It’s hours of stop-and-barely-go traffic jams, of hopeless, desperate strangers tapping on the car windows begging for a seat to anywhere-away-from-here, of check points and thermometers and even, at one point, scientists in hazmat suits with hand-held retinal scanners. John knows none of their methods are even close to one hundred percent accurate, and even when they do turn up someone positive, such as the young man two cars ahead of them who they drag away wailing and thrashing, there is, as yet, nothing they can do to treat, much less cure, the illness. John’s hands tighten on his knees, feeling the dig of the handgun tucked into the back of his jeans, and tries not to think about that young man’s fate, tries not to care.

They make it through the final checkpoint, and then they are away, heading vaguely northwest.

That first night, they camp on the estate grounds of some old family house, turned over for government use as a sort of refugee camp. They don’t have a tent, or even sleeping bags, so John tells Harry to take the back seat and he’ll sleep up front. Most of the families around them have pitched proper camps, some of them even with little fires and marshmallows and sausages. The faces of the children he sees don’t look too frightened in the flamelight, so John supposes it’s making the best of a terrible situation. Still, he sleeps restlessly, the Browning loaded and ready, mere inches from his hand.

About one in the morning, he’s rather glad of his paranoia.

The scream comes from somewhere behind them, at the edge of the impromptu settlement. John jerks up, his fingers closing reflexively around the gun’s grip, and he can just make out the top of a far-off tent shaking violently in the darkness. The campers nearest it are rousing too slowly, torches blinking to life only to wave about pointlessly as people emerge from their tents, eyes sleep-heavy and confused, voices calling, “ _What? What is it? What’s happening?”_

A child is crying, high and fearful, somewhere in the growing commotion, and then the sound cuts off abruptly. John gets out of the car.

There’s another scream, and then, a moment later, more join in. He breaks into a run, weapon held low as he dodges around people who are just starting to realize what’s happening, just starting to understand that they need to _run_ , run for their _lives_.

It’s far from the first dead body John’s ever seen; at this point, it’s not even the first reanimated corpse he’s encountered. But it is the closest he’s ever actually come to one, the first time he’s seen up close what was previously a healthy human body, now wild and deranged, blood and torn flesh trailing from its mouth and blunt, savage fingers rending and devouring and—

He takes aim. The thing is only interested in the small, still body it’s currently eating. It doesn’t so much as look up before he blows its brains out.

—And there are more of them, there, shuffling out of the trees. John gets off a few more shots, and a few more bodies fall to the ground. Someone screams, off to his right. There are more. The noise seems to have got their attention, the noise and the campfires and the smell of hot, fresh blood.

John nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand grabs his arm.

Harry is staring up at him, blue eyes wild and hair still mussed from sleep. John lowers the gun, and they both look around. Then, “Come on!” Harry hisses, tugging at his sleeve, and he races her back to the car.

“No, no, I’ll drive! What if you need to shoot?” Harry says, diving for the driver’s seat as John slides around to the opposite side. Their doors are barely closed before Harry has cranked the car into gear and they are peeling out down the narrow lanes between the tents. Other headlights begin to come to life around them, other refugees coming to the same conclusion that flight is far better than fight here. John holds onto his gun and scans the treeline and tries not to think about the families back there who aren’t as easily mobile as the two of them.

It’s not until the sun is coming up the next morning that he realizes his cane has been sitting on the floor by the backseat all this time, forgotten.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock takes matters into his own hands._

It takes him six hours in a stolen jeep to reach the closest airstrip, and then it’s another four from there to the international airport in Brasilia, where he has to wait through the night for the redeye taking off at five o’clock the next morning. He finally lands in Lisbon, only to learn that his connecting flight to Heathrow has been cancelled. All of the connecting flights have been cancelled. The nine hours spent in the air over the Atlantic have eaten up the last of whatever lead he might have had, and the European governments are moving somewhat faster than he’d anticipated. The train gets him as far as north-eastern Spain, but by the time he arrives there, the French have already closed their borders.

It’s all Sherlock can do to stop himself from simply leaping into the Mar Cantabrico and swimming north.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He stands there and looks up, up into the sky, at Sherlock silhouetted against the grey._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness of this chapter, guys. There's been a bit of a hiccup in the Britpicking due to real-life obligations, but I'm hoping to get it all sorted out soon. :[

In John’s dreams, he kills everyone he has ever loved.

First are his parents, then Harry. Sometimes they’re sick, and sometimes they’re already dead, lurching across the floor towards him, their eyes bloodshot and clouded and their flesh rotting from their bones even as their fingers grasp through the air for him.

Either way, it always ends the same.

Sometimes it’s Greg Lestrade, or Bill Murray, or Mike Stamford. Once, inexplicably, Molly Hooper. When it’s Mrs Hudson, he knows it’s not actually dream, but memory: her wrinkled hand clenched around his, her frail old body wracked with the fever. She’d weathered so many storms, taken so much of their chaos in stride with an affectionate smile and some well-deserved scolding, but this, this faceless villain, this was what finally destroyed her.

Sometimes John thinks he caused all of this: a grieving wish made over a fresh grave, a cry for life after death. Sometimes, his dream self stands over that grave and watches as pale hands dig their way up through the dirt, watches them push the soil aside to reveal a dark head of hair, a white face, a pair of quicksilver eyes. Sometimes he’s whole as he climbs out of the ground and sometimes he’s undead. John’s subconscious can’t seem to decide which is the more effective instrument of torture.

Other times, John is standing in front of Bart’s, fighting his way through the crowd, watching as Sherlock picks himself up off the paving stones, blood dripping from his open skull and eyes vacant and hungry.

And at other times, he stands there and looks up, up into the sky, at Sherlock silhouetted against the grey. The detective throws his arms out, smiling, and says, “ _Catch me, John!_ " as he steps out into the void.

John rushes forward, desperate, always, and then he wakes up.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s heard the reports and the rumours, had assumed that they were greatly exaggerated, but when Sherlock sets eyes on an actual reanimated corpse for the first time, he is not disappointed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the lovely ladies immortalecstasy and aristophrenic for saving my bacon with some last-minute Britpicking, and of course to my sister/beta glasscannon, who has stuck by me through thick, thin, and apocalyptic. <3

It requires a bit of planning, but he’s finally able to sneak past the blockades and into France. Public transport has been suspended, and the few vehicles he sees carry people hurrying back to their homes and families, not sparing so much as a moment’s pause for a lone stranger on the roadside. He acquires a car in Saint-Jean-de-Luz and sets out on the eleven hour drive toward Calais – which, between stopping for fuel and having to devise winding, complex detours around the road blocks set up to funnel people into the government-established health camps, ends up taking nearly twice as long as it should. When he does finally reach his destination, almost a full twenty hours after crossing the border, it is to find the city in ruins.

The Channel Tunnel was of course the first point of entry to be closed, with the situation in the UK quickly spiralling out of control and the no doubt unprecedented influx of refugees streaming in from the doomed island nation. They’d tried to contain it, and then tried to all-out stop it, but they were too late, too slow, as ever. The illness crossed the Channel and spread with frightening rapidity, and all those who were able have long since fled. Those who weren’t able are, of course, still here.

He’s heard the reports and the rumours, had assumed that they were greatly exaggerated, but when Sherlock sets eyes on an actual reanimated corpse for the first time, he is not disappointed. The science behind it is really quite fascinating – a virus that weakens, then kills, and then finally takes over in full parasitic form, driving the vacated body to fulfil its needs to consume flesh and blood. The evolution that must have gone into such an organism developing…

But it’ll have to wait. He reverses hard, spins the car one hundred eighty degrees, mows down a few of the converging undead on his way out of town. There’s nothing of use left here.

He needs to find a boat.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The people they meet begin to dwindle. The ruins and ghost towns grow more numerous._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for late posting. Still having trouble with the Britpicking, mostly because of schedules not matching up well, on top of the time zone differences. This chapter has only been Britpicked by my own research, so if there are any lingering errors, they're my own poor American fault. 
> 
> If there are any Britons reading who'd like to help me out, I'm looking for someone to Britpick on a long-term basis who can help me at the very least get two chapters a week ready, if not get ahead, which is what I'd really like. I have many more chapters written & betad that only need to be Britpicked now, so hopefully we could build up a buffer of ready-to-post chapters. 
> 
> Anyone interested can leave a comment below or send me an ask on [my tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/). Thanks!

They don’t risk the refugee camps again. Their days are spent driving, always looking for somewhere reasonably safe to spend the night. They meet other groups, other families, most of them small, just a few people, mates and spouses and children, all trying to keep moving, keep safe. They share stories, swap supplies, water bottles for crisps and ham sandwiches. John offers medical attention where it’s needed, holding strictly to the military tradition of using the patients’ own supplies to treat them whenever possible. The precious bandages and gauze and morphine stashed deep in the boot of the car are saved for himself and Harry, his only family. The world has shrunk and John’s heart seems to have followed with it; he’ll treat these people, heal them, but they are strangers all. It’s just him and Harry now.

Harry’s hands have been shaking, but she never asks for a drink of anything stronger than water. John has to drive sometimes, when her headache spikes up and her vision starts to blur. She sits curled in the passenger seat then, sweating and shaking and mumbling obscenities at herself. The first week is the worst. John gives her careful doses of the narcotics in his medical kit, pilfered from the abandoned surgery back in London, just to get her through the withdrawals, just so she can sleep. He keeps the case locked, the key on his person, and Harry never makes any attempt to get into it without his permission. She seems to understand that it took an apocalypse to finally get her truly sober.

Everywhere they go, it’s the same: country towns and estates overrun, packed with people fleeing the cities, inevitably drawing the wandering undead with their noise and lights and smell. Or there’s someone infected within their midst, someone who turns in the middle of the night, wakes crazed and bloodthirsty. They hear horror stories from other survivors, people who ran, like they did, people who realised that nomadic mobility was the only option, who looked out their rear-view mirrors and saw what happened to those who stayed in one place. They come across abandoned cars, tents, homes. One great house, the windows boarded up, the doors caved in, where people clearly tried to withstand a siege. Carnage everywhere. No one left alive.

They siphon petrol from the other vehicles left on the side of the road, pick through empty markets for food that hasn’t yet spoiled, grab up anything that could be useful. Kill any undead they find wandering. Watch each other’s backs.

Harry takes to the growing tradition of leaving notes tacked to walls and bulletin boards wherever they go, one tiny leaf of paper amongst hundreds, bearing their names, the date they passed through, and occasionally a short message for anyone who might find it. They both know she’s mostly thinking of Clara.  Only once does she ask John if he wants to write one, and he quietly reminds her that he has no one to leave notes for.

John teaches Harry how to shoot. The Browning is heavy, the recoil too severe for her to have any hope of an accurate shot. They find her a lightweight hunting rifle in the back of an abandoned lorry, though, and suddenly she’s a natural. It helps that her hands have stopped shaking. Adrenaline and the simple need to survive have replaced all other chemical addictions in her brain.

The people they meet begin to dwindle. The ruins and ghost towns grow more numerous. When they do come across other survivors, there’s a sort of etiquette of the road that’s developed: wariness, just this side of hostility. That’s to be expected; it’s when they’re overly friendly that alarm bells start going off in John’s head. If they’re wary, they share information, supplies, food. Never their precious weapons or ammunition. They might camp with them for a night, always with one of the two of them awake, sleeping in shifts, even – _especially_ – when in the company of another group. If they’re friendly, John makes it clear that his gun is fully loaded and that he’s a calm, practised shot. Then he and Harry get back in the car and keep driving.

Once, a friendly group tries to follow them. John leans out the passenger window, hands and mind absolutely steady, and shoots their driver and then their leader, both in the head, both through the windscreen of their car. Harry doesn’t even flinch at the sound of the shots; her foot presses down harder on the accelerator, and the other cars fall away behind them.

Once, they sit with a mother and father through the night as their ten year old daughter succumbs to the fever. When they can no longer find a pulse, Harry takes the mother by the shoulders and leads her gently from the tent. Two quiet hours pass and then the little girl starts to stir again. Her father holds his hand out to John, not looking up. John hands him his gun, stands, steps outside. A moment later: a growl, an echoing _bang_ , silence. The man hands the gun back to John when he emerges and goes to his wife. They wait ‘til morning to light the funeral pyre, and then they part ways, the couple going east, John and Harry west, no one looking back.

They crisscross the country, west to east, east to west, always slowly climbing north. Spring warms into summer. On a morning in mid-June, John pulls out the photo that Harry had stuck in with their family albums all those months ago. He stares at it, at the happy faces under the Christmas lights, ignorant then of the clock ticking down, just six months left, and so much of it wasted. He tries not to think of that last conversation a year ago – the last one face-to-face, or the last one over the phone. He slips the photo back inside the album, the album back in with the others in the boot, and pulls the lid down into place. He climbs into the passenger seat and Harry starts the car without comment.

The next day, they hit the eastern coast, somewhere in Scotland, John thinks. There’s a small town, and they need supplies. Stop at the sporting shop first; this town is remote enough that the ammo racks haven’t yet been picked clean. They load up the car, will have to remember this place, it’s deserted but well-preserved. There are a few corpses shuffling about in front of the supermarket, aimless, and they perk up at the sound of the approaching vehicle. They each kill three there in the car park, John one more inside, Harry two. She smirks at him as they wheel trolleys full of non-perishables to the car: she’s winning today, even if he still has more kills overall.

“It’s not really fair to count any from before I even learned to shoot, you know,” Harry says, and John manages to crack a smile. She grins back at him for a moment, goes to close the car boot, and freezes. “John,” she says, urgent, her eyes wide and staring somewhere over his right shoulder. John tenses, spins around, grabbing his gun out of its holster against his leg, aiming at—

Nothing. There’s nothing there.

He turns back to his sister. “Har, what—?”

“Look!” she says, and points.

He looks. All he sees is the empty town petering out, the cliffs and the ocean, a pile of ancient ruins away up the shore.

Ruins.

Ruins of a castle.

He whips back around. Harry meets his gaze, giddy, excited, thinking the same thing he is.

“D’you think—?”

“With a few renovations—”

“Fortifications, more like—”

“Right. But it could be—”

“Yeah… It could.”

They stand there a moment, absorbing the idea, the obviousness of it, and then Harry jangles the car keys at him. “Come on!” she grins, sliding into the driver’s seat. John rolls his eyes and gets into the passenger side. She never lets him drive anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, no, this isn't any particular castle in Scotland. I researched quite a few but couldn't find one that fit my needs for the story, so I'm making up my own. Hope no one minds... :>


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Anything to get back to your family, no?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to the lovely ladies madame_mary and immortal-ecstasy, who've so graciously been helping me not sound like such an American twit. 
> 
> Also, happy birthday to my brother-in-law, glasscannon's hubby! He is turning... some age. I think we've stopped counting.

Several weeks pass before he’s able to find a boat that will take him across to England. Once, as the main passage of goods and people between the British Isles and Europe, the coastal area surrounding Calais had been teeming with fishermen and trade vessels. Now, it is abandoned, the towns empty as all who possess the means have retreated out onto the waters of the Channel, quarantining themselves and their families from the growing horror on the land. They return to ground only when in desperate need of supplies, and then always with weapons at the ready, shooting anything that moves.

It’s not until Sherlock has been back and forth over the northern coastline three times that he at last finds himself in the right place at the right time one evening at the beginning of April. A crew is returning to their landing rafts after scavenging what they can from the deserted town market, whilst an unusually sizeable herd of _les morts-vivants_ is making its way toward them just outside of town. Sherlock has been tailing the sailors, looking for a chance to talk or to steal a raft, whichever presents itself, and he is thus in a position to raise the alarm just before the undead overtake the humans. In the course of the ensuing mêlée, he happens to save the life of a youngster, who then turns out to be the son of the ship’s captain.

When the dust has settled, the man turns to Sherlock and says he can have any reward he likes in return for the boy’s safety. Sherlock names his price, and the captain laughs in his face – until he realises that it is anything but a joke. Then, he shakes his head gravely, saying, “You don’t want to go there, my friend. Things are bad here, but not like the stories we’ve heard from there. And that was when we were still _hearing_ stories.”

Sherlock doesn’t waiver. “I’m afraid it’s non-negotiable.”

The captain looks at him hard for a moment and then at last slowly nods. “I understand,” he says, holding his son close. “Anything to get back to your family, no?”

Sherlock just nods impatiently. He doesn’t feel the need to correct the man.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The first morning John wakes up in a bed, with a roof over his head, it feels surreal. He feels hopeful. He feels good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just got back from seeing _The Hobbit_. It was awesome. I want part two. _Right now._
> 
> Thanks again to the wonderful madame_mary for her indispensable Britpicking, and, always, to my dear sister/beta reader, glasscannon.

The first morning John wakes up in a bed, with the castle’s roof over his head, it feels surreal. He feels hopeful. He feels good. He rolls out of bed and tells himself he’s imagining the twinge in his leg.

By the end of the first week, they’ve scavenged nearly all of the usable supplies from the nearest town, including hauling in several loads of kindling and a few good pieces of furniture for each of them. They sleep in shifts like they’ve done for months, and they don’t worry about running low on ammunition, food, or even clean water, given the discovery of the ice cold spring bubbling right out of the cliffs that their little fortress is built on. Harry is planning to lay a vegetable garden in the dark earth of the courtyard and pointing out all the spots that need improvement in the outer walls and just generally chattering on.

By the end of the second week, John’s trying to hide the shaking in his hands and trying not to think about retrieving the cane he’s left stashed in the boot of the car these last months.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He will find John. He will. Statistics be damned._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww yeah, look at me, posting on time for once! :D

London is a battlefield, now more so than ever.

His knowledge of every rooftop and alley aid him immensely, but even so there are a few close calls, more than a few instances in which he finds himself holding his breath and clutching tightly the revolver young Luc had gifted to him just before he’d disembarked from the French vessel in Dover. The shoddy little handgun will certainly get the job done, but it is nowhere near as sturdy and comforting in his palm as a British Army Browning L9A1 would be.

His first instinct is to return to Baker Street, but that is an instinct he fights. John won’t be there, he’s sure of it. He goes instead to the surgery, manages to break in without drawing too much attention to himself, finds the employee records, finds John’s address.

He moved out. Not staying with Harry, either, but somewhere completely new. Sherlock can’t say why this information brings a frown to his face.

It’s easy enough to extrapolate a route of departure from the address. The roadblocks are all abandoned now, overrun, but he can see how traffic would have flowed, how it did flow and how it eventually stopped, the streets now clogged with derelict vehicles, some with bodies still within their confines, metal tombstones pockmarking the city he loves. There are pamphlets at the checkpoints detailing the locations of the refugee camps within easy driving distance; he puts them in order according to each camp’s relative likelihood of being chosen by John as a reasonably safe place to take shelter. He drives to the first location on his list, is somewhat annoyed to find it overrun with undead, though none of the wandering bodies are people he recognizes.

The second site is much the same as the first. As is the third. And the fourth. He visits every one of the possible refugee camps, and they all bear signs of undead attacks and no signs of John. From each campsite, there are a number of probable destinations towards which John might have proceeded, but no hard indications as to which route he did in fact pursue. Sherlock will simply have to check them all.

Days turn to weeks, and each one is as insignificant as the last. He keeps looking. He eats little, sleeps less. Every moment wasted on his body’s needs is a moment he can never regain, a moment in which the trail grows still colder, the road ever longer, the search increasingly improbable.

No. He will find John. He will. Statistics be damned.

He just has to keep looking.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unending thanks to madame_mary, who's gone above and beyond the call of Britpicking to make this story even marginally readable, and to my sister glasscannon, who has routinely talked me down from the ledge when all I want to do is end the story with 'Rocks fall. Everyone dies.'

It’s always dark when John jerks awake, regardless of night or day.

He sucks in a tight breath, heart still pounding from troubled dreams, and reaches up to the curtains covering the window beside his head, tugs them partway open without sitting up. Day, this time. Dawn is just breaking over the sea cliffs behind the castle, bathing everything in pale grey. John sits up, swings his legs out of bed, rubs his stiff shoulder. He thinks again about acquiring a rug before winter sets in. Nothing fancy, just something to put between his feet and the bloody freezing flagstones.

He can hear the castle slowly coming to life beyond his little room. The guards switching out, the second night shift trudging back to their beds as three others take their places on the wall for the morning. It’ll be Abigail, Tom, and Caleb now, if he remembers the schedule correctly. Kal, Harry, and Damien will be absent from breakfast, making up for the last six hours of sleep they missed keeping watch. His mind sours around that last name, but he shakes it off, sets it aside in favour of washing and dressing. The photo that rests amongst his jumpers in the topmost drawer takes him by surprise, just slightly, just as it always does, no matter how many mornings he sees it in there. Harry had slipped it in among his things when they were first settling into the castle, and he’s not had the heart to remove it. Can barely bring himself to touch it, most days.

Sherlock looks so happy there.

He retrieves the thick, warm jumper he was originally reaching for, closes the drawer, pulls the garment on over his head, and steps out into the hall. Harry’s just disappearing into her own room, directly across from his, and she gives him a weak wave and a broad yawn before shutting the door and audibly collapsing into bed. Damien is a few paces behind her; they exchange cool glares before simply avoiding eye contact as has become their habit. Kal is nowhere to be seen, probably already sound asleep down the hallway. John steels himself, pushes off from the doorframe, and forces himself to take measured, even steps to meet the murmur of voices in the great hall.

The fire has been banked for the day, the stack of wood and ash in the grand fireplace smouldering quietly now. Winston has made their usual breakfast fare of scones during the small hours and now sits snoring around his pipe in his chair in the corner while the others gather about the two mismatched dining tables in the centre of the room. A chorus of quiet ‘good morning’s greet him as he takes his seat, and a steaming mug of tea appears at his elbow as he’s reaching for a plate.

“Oh, thank you,” he says, looking up.

Mary smiles shyly back at him. “You’re welcome, doctor,” she murmurs and moves back around to her own seat between Lorena and Charles.

Harry sleeps until noon, and when she comes wandering out of her room again, John is in the courtyard with the others, pulling weeds from between their precious vegetables. Kal and Damien aren’t far behind her, and all three pitch in without a word. Gardening, like most of the daily chores, is a group effort. After lunch, they splinter off into their individual tasks: Mary leading the three youngsters in their lessons; Emily, Winston, and Lorena climbing the wall for the afternoon guard shift; those in need taking their laundry to the tub that encircles the spring in the very back of the castle. John inspects the outer face of the wall for erosion, Charles and Harry in tow, while Tom, Kal, and Damien haul in more firewood from the trees north of the compound.

John has the first guard shift tonight, and as he assumes his place atop the wall in the light of the setting sun, the Browning a comforting weight at his side, he thinks, _Tomorrow._

_Tomorrow will be better._

The thought is nearly enough to chase the tremor from his hands.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last update for this year. Between traveling and spending time with family for Christmas next week, I don't want to make any promises for new chapters that I can't keep. Ch 12 will be up on Tuesday 1 Jan 2013. See you all then, and have a lovely holiday! :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I love you. I hope we find each other again someday._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope you all had a lovely holiday :) Sorry that this chapter’s a bit late. I’m posting from my phone as I sit here in the airport waiting for my flight to board, so I sincerely apologize if it’s at all wonky. I’ll fix any bugs once I am back on solid ground tonight. 
> 
> Happy new year!

There are rumours to follow, at least. A doctor who fits John’s description travelling with a woman who fits Harry’s. It was months ago, and they were headed east, or west, or north. It’s not much but it’s not nothing. 

By comparison, the note he finds pinned to the central bulletin board in a village near Liverpool is nothing short of fantastic. 

It’s the first hard evidence he’s found of them, and at this point he’s willing to take Harry’s assertion that John is with her and well as absolute fact. Her hand was shaking more than usual when she wrote this; suffering from alcohol detoxification. Dated the ninth of April. Months ago. Heading toward Sheffield next, not much hope of finding anything there, but they have to try.

The last line isn’t addressed to him, but that doesn’t stop him from reading it, or from hearing it in the other Watson’s voice.

_If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I love you. I hope we find each other again someday._

He keeps the note, and sets out for Sheffield.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _For all intents and purposes, John Watson has vanished from the face of the earth, has simply stopped existing, left not a trace of himself since that balmy June day over a year ago._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter this time! :D You guys have earned it, after all the itty bitty chapters in the past...
> 
> And, even though it's been in the tags all along, I want to issue an **extra warning** now: we will start to see more mentions of suicidal ideation from here on out, so if that's a touchy subject for you, please use your best judgement in continuing to read or not. I don't want to spark anything unpleasant for anyone :(
> 
> Many, many thanks to madame_mary and glasscannon, who've both gone above and beyond the call of duty to make this story what it is. <3

John would never tell Harry this, but most days he can’t wait to get the hell away from that damn castle of hers.

It’s not the people. The majority of them are perfectly nice, sensible individuals, with only one outstanding exception, and even Damien has managed to fit into the daily grind of keeping the place safe and running smoothly. It’s not the structure itself, with its cold floors and moist walls, or the life they live there, all dirt and sweat and only the rudest semblance of civilization to comfort them and—

No, it is the life. It is _absolutely_ the life. Just not for any of the reasons the others try to keep themselves from complaining about as the days wear on.

He holds his hand up, hears Caleb and Harry both freeze two steps behind him. 

No, if John is really honest with himself—

He gives a sharp gesture forward, fingers tightening around his handgun.

—honest like he used to be, years ago—

Harry readies her rifle, Caleb his shotgun.

—honest like running across London rooftops, like clandestine meetings in warehouses—

They’re in a straight line now, nearly shoulder to shoulder, weapons ready.

—honest like grey eyes glancing at him and in a single moment reading every thought that has ever passed through his head—

The herd shuffles around the edge of the building up ahead, five of them. The first one is oblivious, but the second spots them, lets out a shrill bellow, and comes shambling toward them.

—if he’s _really_ being honest, he’d admit it—

They open fire, felling the first three before they can take more than a few steps down the road in their direction, the last ones after only a pace or two more.

—admit that this, this right here—

John stalks toward the bodies, gun still at the ready. One of them twitches toward him, not quite dead yet. He puts another bullet in its brain, and it lies still.

—this is what he _lives_ for.

His hands have completely stopped shaking now. When he got up this morning, just the anticipation of going out on a raid had been enough to all but erase his limp. It’ll be back in a week or less, he knows, but then he’ll just have to come out looking for supplies again, looking for something to shoot, for that adrenaline rush, for the danger—

Harry is looking at him askance, her forehead crinkling with worry. She drops her gaze as soon as he looks over at her.

“Chemist’s this way,” Caleb tells them, already jogging ahead, leaping easily over the corpses stretched across the road, all young eagerness and boundless energy. At just fifteen, he’s as seasoned a veteran as any of them, was surviving entirely on his own before John and Harry came upon him several months ago, holed up in an abandoned supermarket, his family long dead, everyone else departed.

“Have you got the shopping list?” Harry calls after him, her voice little more than a dry hiss in the still air.

In response, Caleb pulls the paper from his pocket and waves it over his shoulder without looking back. Even from here, John’s tight doctor’s scrit is visible against the stark white background, medications and first aid supplies meticulously spelled out for the youngster to collect. John almost wants to follow the boy inside to search the pharmacist’s back counter himself, as if a doctor’s presence would make the much needed but rarely found antibiotics and other pills miraculously appear – but the fact of their situation is that this, like most of the other towns they’ve visited, has likely been ransacked already, survivors blindly grabbing up anything and everything in sight, perhaps in an effort to protect themselves from the plague, or else hoping to put themselves out of their misery, to drift away in a drugged haze rather than enduring mankind’s decline, circling the drain of extinction until they are at last overtaken by the ravenous undead. That would certainly be the easier way to go, a part of John’s mind whispers, to simply close his eyes and never have to face this desolate life again, to sleep, and dream, and never wake.

He shakes his head, fights the air for breath, forces his mind away from those thoughts and instead toward the dwindling inventory of their medical supplies back at the castle, toward the people depending on him, his sister, his family, the people who are still here, the people he can save. He scans their surroundings, keeping one eye on Caleb inside the darkened chemist shop, the top of his head bobbing in and out of view above the shelves, another eye on his sister, who’s made a beeline for the cluttered notice board on the opposite side of the street, and both on the ravaged buildings around them. He’s watching for movement, for threats, but he doesn’t miss Harry giving him _that_ _look_ again.

“You didn’t have to come, you know,” John reminds her, his voice low and sharp.

Harry looks up from the wall of fluttering notes to glare at him. “Like I’m going to let you out of my sight when you’re like this,” she replies.

“Like what?” John asks, just to be obstinate. Then, because they both know exactly _like what_ , “I don’t need you to babysit me.”

“Oh, because you’re doing such a lovely job of not getting yourself killed,” she snaps back.

“I’m not dead yet, am I?” John can feel an angry flush climbing his neck, and he looks away from scanning the storefronts for a moment to shoot a glare at her.

She snarls right back at him. “Despite your best efforts, it would seem!”

“I am _not_ —” he starts fiercely, but cuts himself off as Caleb comes loping back over to them, cheerfully swinging a loaded plastic bag from each hand and another from the barrel of his shotgun like a hobo, plastic bottles and first aid packets clattering against each other within.

“Think I got it all,” the teenager chirps as he draws even with them.

“All of it?” John asks, surprised.

“Well,” Caleb hedges, “everything from in front of the counter, anyhow.” He opens one of the bags, displaying canisters of multivitamins and supplements, along with plasters and gauze, medical tape, paracetamol, antibiotic cream – but none of the prescription strength medications John had hoped for, no antibiotics or strong painkillers, things they would be sorely wishing for in the case of injury or other emergency. “Sorry, doc,” Caleb says. “The back was completely empty, picked clean already.”

“Damn scavengers,” Harry scowls.

Caleb shrugs, his smile flashing carefree and easy. “Tesco’s next?” And then he’s off again, before either of them can get another word in edgewise.

John and Harry both watch him go, and then she shoots John a dirty look – their argument has not been forgotten and is far from over. “I’ll get the car,” she says, and stomps off back the way they came.

John waffles for a moment, looking after Caleb, who’s reached the supermarket at the far end of the street and is propping open the front doors for easier loading, and then after Harry, marching down the road away from him, her back straight, fists clenched tight around her rifle, feet hitting the pavement with enough force to make John’s knees ache in sympathy.

And yet, he feels no trace of a limp, not even the slightest tremble in his hands.

He is _not_ trying to kill himself.

Not really.

He turns away, frustration and anger and the bloody grief that he’ll never fully shake all balled up into one, all sitting on his chest and trying to smother him, making him want to run, want to shoot something, want to ask _why, god, what did he ever do—_

He finds himself looking at the notice board, staring but not seeing. _Seeing but not obs—_

No.

The papers swim into focus in front of his eyes, names and dates and messages, all vague, personal, intended only to be understood by their addressees. Written on whatever scraps of paper or napkins people could find, anything just to leave a little mark of themselves, some little bit of proof that they were here, they were alive, the world wasn’t really over, not entirely.

He’s never left one. Not once. Harry has, has littered the countryside with them, has left her signature on every town and landmark they’ve passed. But not him. For all intents and purposes, John Watson has vanished from the face of the earth, has simply stopped existing, left not a trace of himself since that balmy June day over a year ago, and even then nothing but a pathetic little one-line blog entry, which doesn’t count for anything without the internet and electricity and people to read it.

He’s not actually trying to kill himself, but it is nice to be reminded sometimes that he is not, in fact, already dead.

John blinks and realises he’s been staring at one note in particular, frowning at it, trying to puzzle it out before he was even fully aware he was doing it. The colour of the paper was what caught his eye first – bright pink, a little sun-bleached but still disgustingly cheery amongst all this hopelessness – and what holds his attention is the utterly ludicrous message printed there. It’s half covered by the notes around it, but is itself pinned on top of several more layers of the usual desperate messages to loved ones or to the greater injustice of the universe. No one bothers with things like lost kittens and stolen bikes anymore, and that’s why this note, clearly pinned up some time after the end of the world, is so very odd. On the flier is an image of a large hunting dog of indeterminate breed, along with the caption:

_LOST!_  
 _One hound._  
 _Answers to Bluebell.  
_ _If found, please contact Anthea._

The silly pink paper is faded and dirty, the telephone number across the bottom now useless. Anthea is not a common name – but surely, it must be a coincidence. Surely, his eyes are only playing tricks on him. Surely, he’s finally losing his mind.

A growl sounds behind him, far, far too close, and John’s gun is still in his hand, still loaded, ready when he whips around. He yells, “Caleb, heads up!” and he remembers where he is, remembers what world he lives in now, a world where he shoots walking corpses in the head before they can take a bite out of him, a world that in no way contains warehouse meetings and sleek black sedans and consulting detectives—

He can hear Harry driving up the road, screeching to a stop, clambering out when she sees. Caleb bursts from the supermarket and gets off two quick blasts from his shotgun, and John drops a few more of them, and then it is quiet again.

Only for a moment, though – John tenses, hears movement from the little side street off to his left, and he turns, readies for another assault, aware he’s only got a few rounds left before he’ll need to switch out the empty clip with the fresh one in his back pocket. There it is: a figure has emerged from one of the buildings, cast in shadow in the narrow street, but tall, slim, moving quickly forward, blinking as he steps into the light.

John has seen this too many times in his nightmares not to know how it will all play out: a dark head of hair, a white face, a pair of quicksilver eyes raking over him. He’s rushing forward, hands reaching out, as John stumbles backwards, and this is the point when the dream must decide exactly how to torture him this time. Will he be whole and smiling, so that John is hollow and cold when he wakes and remembers the world he lives in? Or will his flesh begin to rot from his bones as he approaches, those eyes turning clouded and clotted with blood, leaving John to heave and vomit as he scrambles from his bed?

Except this dream isn’t dissipating. He’s not waking up, and in the space of the last two breaths the pale figure has halved the distance between them, eyes hungry, and it can’t be real, it’s not really him, it’s some sort of waking terror, he’s finally truly losing his mind, hallucinating, right here in broad daylight. A violent tremor works its way down John’s spine and his finger curls around the trigger. He needs to stop this, jerk himself back to reality somehow, disrupt the terrible mirage in front of him.

His body is shaking but his hands are steady, even as a dry croak of a whisper claws its way up and out of his throat, because it can’t be, it _can’t be_ —

“ _Sherlock..._ ”

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Suddenly a thrill goes through him, because Sherlock would know that voice anywhere, **anywhere** —_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, sorry about that cliffhanger, guys. It had to be done. Now, let's see what Sherlock's been up to, shall we? ;)

He collects more notes, hears more rumours, keeps them all, runs down every lead he finds. Not everyone he meets is helpful, of course, sometimes because they haven’t encountered John and sometimes because they would rather attack him, two men blitzing him from behind, pinning his arms while another pistol-whips him across the face, and then they take his car and his ammunition and all of his supplies. His precious notes are scattered across the ground more than once when they search his pockets and deem the scraps of paper unimportant, but he always gathers them up as soon as he’s able to move again, puts them back in their proper order and hunts over the surrounding ground until he recovers any that the wind has begun to carry off. They can take his weapons and his transportation and his water and they can beat him and leave him for dead, because all of those things can be replaced, and he can get up and start again, like he’s done before, just as long as he can keep these bits of John, these clues that will, eventually, he knows it, lead him to the end of this search.

The towns have all blurred together, just like every day of the last five months, an endless wash of grey swirling around the pinpricks of light that are the rumours, the mentions, the clues. This September day and this town are identical to all of the others before, grey, grey, dull, but potential at its core, a Schrödinger notice board that might hold another clue, another point of light, unknowable until confirmed, both there and not. He hides the most recent car in the trees off the side of the road, scouts around the edges of the buildings, tracks the corpses wandering the streets, determines a secure route to sneak past them. The potential clues are calling him.

He’s almost to the centre of the town when he hears the quiet rumble of an engine, brakes squeaking, the slam of car doors several streets over, and then three new sets of footsteps on the cobblestones. They’re approaching from the north, on a collision course with a group of the undead he spotted earlier. There is a moment of quiet and then a quick series of shots rings through the air, and the walking dead fall silent. Sounds like a shotgun, double-barrel; a rifle, very small calibre, light; and a handgun, semi-automatic, well-maintained, powerful, a skilled shooter. Sherlock pauses in the shadows between two buildings, listens to them making their way down the street just beyond. He ducks into the side door of one of the shops before they see him, finds himself in a small storage chamber, vacant but for the cardboard boxes stacked neatly against the back wall, and leaves the door ajar just a crack, listening to the indistinct murmur of voices.

He needs to learn more about these people before revealing himself. They’re armed, two reasonably adept plus one highly seasoned marksman. That suggests a gang-type group, with one strong leader and two lackeys, enough muscle to take him down if they can get him surrounded. He leans against the doorjamb next to the open crack, listening intently. One of them sounds young, a teenager, well into puberty but his voice not yet fully deepened into manhood. The other two are adults, mid-to-late thirties, talking quietly, arguing. One man and one woman. A family, then? Parents and their son? The odds of a peaceful exchange of information have increased dramatically if such is the case. Still, he’ll need to be cautious in approaching them; parents become easily protective, and they may perceive him as a threat if he’s not careful.

The pair stop their argument at the child’s interruption, and then they all seem to part ways, the teen darting across to another of the buildings while the woman stomps away, back towards their vehicle. It’s most likely that the man who’s been left standing nearest Sherlock's hiding place, no doubt keeping watch over the other two, is the one carrying the handgun, the one with the most weapons experience, and the one with the itchiest trigger finger. It won’t do to come out now, not when the other man is already on high-alert, less likely to pause before shooting without his wife or son close at hand to temper him.

It’s quiet for a few minutes, and all he can hear is the shuffling movements of the undead in the town. They’re more alert now, drawn by the sounds of the earlier gunshots, and are quickly converging on the group’s location. Any moment now, the man standing guard should notice them.

Yes, there it is: a burst of gunfire, and then a yell of, “ _Caleb, heads up!_ ” And suddenly a thrill goes through him, because Sherlock would know that voice anywhere, _anywhere_ — A few more shots echo through the air but he’s already shoving the door open, lurching out into the alley, stumbling against the far wall in his haste, eyes searching wildly, blinking in the sudden brightness of the sun, but then there, there he is.

John.

Sherlock takes a step forward, and then another and another, he can’t stop himself, even though John’s gun is currently aimed at his head and John’s eyes are impossibly wide and it looks like he’s shaking, his hands are steady and the gun is steady, but the rest of him is trembling almost violently, and when he says Sherlock’s name his voice sounds like gravel and broken glass, and he’s just a few yards away now, so close, after all this time, _right here—_

John takes a long, shuddering breath and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s muttering something to himself, shaking his head, and Sherlock can’t quite make out the words, they’re too low and too fast, and when John opens his eyes again Sherlock is reaching for him.

Sherlock says, “John,” just as John’s finger squeezes back on the trigger.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, when I said I was sorry about leaving you all with a cliffhanger... Yeah, I might have been lying.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There’s so much blood._

There’s so much blood.

For a moment, John can’t breathe. He’s not sure where he is, if this is a small town in Scotland or the street in front of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. His movements feel slow, heavy, as if fighting through water or the crush of onlookers around a body on the pavement.

There’s so much _fucking blood._

Sherlock is pawing weakly at John’s sleeve, leaving behind red smears over the fabric, his voice a ragged whisper, “John… John, I… I found you…”

God, the blood…

Sherlock lets out a kind of sigh and crumples into the ground, his eyes rolling closed. John’s not sure if the pulse fluttering under his fingertips is real or his own wishful thinking.

He looks up at his sister. Harry stares back at him, eyes wide and mirroring the frozen horror on his own face, and then she snaps into action.

“ _Come on!_ ” she snarls, and grabs Sherlock’s left arm around her shoulders, hauls up, “Let’s get him to the car— Come on—” John tries to keep pressure on the wound as he follows her lead.

The guards on the walls jump to attention when they emerge from the trees, but Caleb leans out the front window and waves urgently at them, and Harry doesn’t even slow the car as they all rush to open the gate. John is in the back seat with Sherlock’s head in his lap and his jacket wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulder and both hands pressing in and down, trying to stem the steady rush of blood out of his body.

They’re in the castle’s big main room next and Harry is yelling at everyone and John is barking orders as several people help him carry Sherlock in but John doesn’t ever take his hands off of him. Someone has the sense to dig out the batteries and torches saved for just such an emergency as this and Sherlock looks so pale laid out on the medical table John keeps at the back of the room and there’s _so much blood._

Clear out the shrapnel, follow the path of the destruction, a chunk missing from the clavicle, fractures to the top of the right scapula, the bullet ricocheted off the bone, up and out through the trapezius muscle, barely missed the major arteries, it’s a miracle, it’s amazing, it’s brilliant, _he’s_ brilliant, he’s alive— how— Sherlock— _alive_ —

The sun has gone down. Harry tells him she’ll take care of the cleanup. John washes and puts on clean clothes and draws the blackout curtains in his room so that he can light his one lonely candle on his little bedside table. Then he sits in his chair in the corner and watches the breath go in and out of Sherlock’s lungs.

Because Sherlock is alive.

_Sherlock is alive._

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John’s voice takes on the familiar tones of scolding, of trying to beat his pragmatic common sense into his flatmate’s skull (Sherlock doesn’t think there are words in the English language to encapsulate how terribly he’d missed that)._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, m'dears! I have to tell you, this chapter went through several drafts recently, each (hopefully) less stupid than the last. I'm just so lucky to have people like madame_mary and glasscannon to kindly point out when I was being a complete idiot on certain issues and to help me fix them, as well as my all-knowing father who continues to answer my questions on topics both esoteric and macabre and who (I think) really believes me when I assure him that I'm a writer, not a serial killer. (Seriously, some of the stuff I've had to research for this story...)

Everything hurts. Is he high? Was he? No. Back of his head; he fell down, hard. His face, cheekbone; fell down, spinning, rolling, abrasions from the ground, rocks, dirt. Right arm, right shoulder, yes, right shoulder is the worst, by far. Flex his right hand. Some response, but _pain_. Definitely the shoulder.

It’s dark when he opens his eyes, but he can hear someone breathing, slow and even, off to his left, and a steady crash and roar, muffled, from further away. (Automobile traffic? No; ocean. Obvious.)

He’s lying supine on what feels like a very sorry old mattress. His feet are nearly hanging off the end. There is a lumpy pillow under his head, though, and a thick, warm duvet covering him. His right arm is folded across his chest, a rough cloth sling tied about his neck and forearm, immobilizing it. Bandages on his shoulder? Yes. Maybe stitches? He lifts his left hand to reach across and feel for stitches, ignores the sting and tug of medical tape at the juncture of his elbow (sharp stab deep beneath the skin when he moves: intravenous needle). His fingers brush over his right shoulder, and even that light pressure sends a bolt of white pain down his arm and through his chest and elicits an involuntary hiss from his mouth.

In the dark, the breathing person startles. Chair legs scrape quietly on the floor (wooden chair, stone floor, swept clean, unadorned) and then John’s voice exhales, “ _Jesus_ — Sherlock—” There’s a pause, during which Sherlock allocates all of his spare concentration towards penetrating the inky blackness before him, and then John asks, quieter, “Are you awake?”

“Yes.” His voice is thick, his throat dry. He coughs once, and says, with irritation, _not_ worry, “I can’t see.”

Scrape, spark, fizz – a match bursts to life in John’s hand, and he leans over to touch the flame to a candle on the bedside table. Sherlock blinks against the bright teardrop burnt into his retinas, willing it to fade faster so that he can see John’s face unimpeded. (Also on the table: a stack of paper scraps – the notes he’s collected, that led him here, led him to John – and the skeleton of a weighty desk lamp, now performing admirably as the anchor for the clear bag of fluid attached to the IV line in Sherlock’s left arm.)

John shakes the match out and drops it on the plate holding the candle, then bends down to pick up a water bottle from the floor by his chair.  He unscrews the cap and scoots forward, one hand going behind Sherlock’s head while the other tips the water against his lips. Sherlock takes a few gulps, his parched throat rejoicing (annoyingly) at the relief, but he pulls away after a few seconds so that he can look at John again. John recaps the bottle, drops it on the floor, presses the back of his hand to Sherlock’s forehead. He exhales, shoulders sagging, and then sits back, lets his head hang down for a moment, which is no good because Sherlock _wants to_ _see_ _his face._ John wipes his palms on his jeans, leans forward, and then looks up to peer over at Sherlock. “All right?”

Sherlock glances from the IV line down to the bandage on his opposite shoulder, then touches his head with his sole operational hand. His skull and brainstem both appear to be intact. “You missed.”

John’s lips press together into a flat line. Angry.

“You never miss.”

“I guess you’re just lucky I’m so sentimental,” John replies, but his voice is strained, free of any hint of mirth. His shoulders are tense, his arms braced taut like bridge suspension wires, his gaze intent and barely blinking. There are more lines on his face than Sherlock remembers (he’d had them all memorised, before, but now there are more and none of them look like they’re the result of excessive laughter) and he is more pale than he ought to be, pallid underneath his usual tan.

“I’m not feverish,” Sherlock states, frowning slightly at the tingle still hovering on his skin where John had checked his forehead. He feels as though his brain is only half online, and that one functional half is slow and crowded and distracted by the hot ball of pain where his shoulder is supposed to be.

“No,” John agrees, then, softer, “Thank god.”

“Saline solution,” Sherlock continues, nodding at the IV bag. The text printed on the plastic identifies it as a catheter bag and tubing, of a variety that could be found at any chemist, now serving a purpose opposite that for which it was originally intended, providing fluids to the body rather than accepting them. He shifts his hips minutely under the blanket (fights a wince at the lance of pain that accompanies the movement); with the amount of water entering his system, he’ll need to see to the resultant bodily functions before long.

“Just salt and water,” John answers, his hands flexing on his knees. “Good enough in a pinch, but we’ll need to monitor your vitamins, make sure your blood chemistry stays balanced.” He swallows, and his voice is smaller when he speaks again, his words sounding weary and oddly hollow. “You lost a lot of blood.”

Sherlock’s gaze returns to John’s pale face, his tired eyes, the slight tremble in his hands that has nothing to do with traumatic war injuries and everything to do with low blood sugar. The pieces have taken an agonizingly long time to fall into place, but fall they do. “And you gave me a transfusion.”

John lets out a puff of breath and sits back in his chair, slightly favours his right elbow as he folds his arms, bending it more gingerly than the other – Sherlock can easily visualise the bandaged puncture wound hidden beneath the sleeve of John’s jumper and shirt, where the blue of his vein rises to the surface between faded freckles and a small scar left by stray shrapnel, details spotted and memorised over the course of their tenure at Baker Street. “About two pints,” John confirms. He starts to draw breath to say something else – most likely to point out that the compatibility testing he’d had done a few months into their acquaintance had finally paid off (at the time, Sherlock had scoffed and whinged and disparaged the idea of ever needing a donation of blood; the fact that it’s _John’s_ blood in his veins now does make some (unquantifiable) difference in the matter) – but he seems to think better of it a moment later, and lets his mouth fall closed once more.

“We match,” Sherlock murmurs, echoing John’s words from that day when the results had come back. He lets his eyes fall closed as the pain in his shoulder flares, embers of orange and red under his skin, angry, burning, hungry. He grits his teeth. “Antibiotics?”

“No.” He hears the tiny telltale sounds of rustling clothing and hair as John shakes his head, leans forward to plant his elbows on his knees. “Or painkillers, for that matter,” he says, his voice rough and strangled with frustration. “We’ve got paracetamol and the like, though honestly this is probably going to be more effective.” There’s the heavy clink of glass on stone, and Sherlock slits his eyes open to see John holding a large bottle of scotch, glittering darkly in the candlelight.

He grimaces, turns his face away, hisses as a new spasm shudders through his shoulder.

“You passed out earlier,” John says, uncorking the bottle as his voice takes on the familiar tones of scolding, of trying to beat his pragmatic common sense into his flatmate’s skull (Sherlock doesn’t think there are words in the English language to encapsulate how terribly he’d missed that), “but you’re going to need something for the pain now. You’re not going to be able to sleep otherwise, much less think straight.”

Sherlock wrinkles his nose but nods his assent, and John slips a hand around the back of his head once more while the other presses the liquor to his lips.

“You should just cauterise the damn thing and be done with it,” he grouses when John pulls the bottle back a fraction to let him catch his breath.

John blinks, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline. “That’s... probably not the best idea. And a bit to the extreme, honestly.”

Sherlock snorts, accepts a few more swallows of scotch. His throat is burning and his head is beginning to swim (more from the effort of drinking than the alcohol itself at this point). “You said yourself that you haven’t any antibiotics on hand, and you’re worried about a fever, about infection. Every minute the wound sits open is another minute in which you run the risk of microorganisms finding their way inside.”

“You’re honestly less likely to contract something here than if you were in hospital,” John says, frowning and not meeting Sherlock’s gaze.

“Really, John?” he drawls. “You’re not at all concerned about the increased risks of infection while in the midst of a _zombie apocalypse?_ ”

John finally looks him in the eye, albeit with a glare. “If you were at risk of catching _that_ in here, we’d have much bigger problems to worry about than just a gunshot wound.”

“My thoughts precisely; you can’t afford at a time like this to have anyone who’s not pulling their weight, so the sooner it’s closed up and I’m no longer invalided—”

“I am _not_ discussing this with you,” John cuts him off, his knuckles turning white around the bottleneck as he all but shoves it at Sherlock’s mouth again.

Sherlock grunts unpleasantly but takes a few more gulps. Already, he can feel his body beginning to warm with the effects of the alcohol, drowning out the fire in his shoulder.  It’s been several days since he last consumed any substantial amount of food, and he can estimate the amount of blood he’d have lost from a wound of this type. With those variables in mind, at the rate he’s drinking, he’ll be properly drunk in just a few short minutes, and then miserable tomorrow morning.

After a few more swallows, John sits back to restopper the bottle and set it down on the flagstones, then rises from his chair and crosses the room. Sherlock hears the splash of water, the squeak of bar soap against wet skin, and a minute later John returns and leans over the bed, pulling his jumper up to cover his nose and mouth. He checks the bandage and the sling on Sherlock’s right arm with expert fingers, _hmm_ ing quietly to himself, and then, apparently satisfied, steps back. He washes his hands again, straightens his clothes, and resumes his seat. He draws a deep breath, hands gripping his knees, exactly the way Sherlock remembers his _I’m going to be the mature adult here and not continue arguing about this_ routine (another thing he’d missed). “Better?” he asks, watching Sherlock’s face, a wisp of tension still evident in his voice.

“Mm.” Sherlock’s eyelids droop as he feels a wave of alcohol enter his bloodstream. “’v still got an open wound, though.”

John sighs (his _I’m being a mature adult, why can’t you be one too?_ sigh) and doesn’t say anything, but Sherlock hears the chair creak and a whisper of breath as he reaches over and blows out the candle on the bedside table.

Sherlock’s eyes jerk open in the sudden dark, searching blindly, irrationally. “John?”

“Right here,” John answers (something odd in his tone – fatigue, shortness of breath, something suppressed, unidentifiable without more data), and his hand briefly rests on Sherlock’s left wrist. Sherlock’s head is fuzzy, filling with white noise, can’t remember what he was going to say, and a moment later John’s voice murmurs, “Go to sleep.”

Sherlock grimaces half-heartedly, and then just as he’s drifting off, he thinks he remembers, though now it sounds silly and breathy in his head, it’s all he can think, all he wants to say:

_I found you, John._

_I did it._

_I found you._

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Disbelief, Anger, Bargaining. Sherlock is still staring at him. He needs to get out of here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait and post this when I woke up like usual, but I figured, what the hell, I'm already here and it's technically Friday. Have an early chapter for once! (Incidentally, I just posted a new oneshot, completely unrelated to this story but Johnlock nonetheless.)
> 
> As ever, many thanks to my big-sister-turned-beta-reader GlassCannon and to my lovely Britpicker Madame_Mary.

John wakes with a crick in his neck and his shoulder aching with the cold, and for a moment he’s confused as to why he’s sitting in his chair rather than curled up in bed – but then he hears quiet snoring, and the previous twenty-four hours come rushing back to him.

Not a dream, then.

It’s still pitch black in his room, but he can hear people moving about in the great hall. He reaches over blindly for the curtains, finds the edge, pulls them back a little to peer outside. The sun is already well into the sky, all of the morning mist burned off by now, leaving only the usual grey cloud cover and the distant spray and roar of the waves below them. He looks over to the bed next, Sherlock’s profile outlined dimly in the indirect light, his face turned away, towards the wall, his brows knit together in an unconscious grimace of pain.

John sighs, pushes the curtain open a little farther, climbs to his feet. He’s hesitant to wake Sherlock, but his bandages are going to have to be changed, and he’ll be nearly sober by now, greatly in need of food and some more alcohol to take the edge off the pain. He finds the supplies he needs in his medical kit, scrubs his hands with soap and fresh water in the wash basin on top of his chest of drawers, and tugs his jumper up over his nose and mouth as he steps back over to the bed, the nearest thing to a surgical mask to be had here. Hydrogen peroxide, clean flannels, and packets of sterile gauze go on the bedside table. The makeshift IV has been abandoned, removed during the small hours of the morning once it was empty. He’ll probably need to mix up more saline solution, make sure Sherlock stays hydrated during his recovery.

It occurs to him as he’s leaning across to loosen the edges of the bandage that this was the first surgery he’d performed in a year and a half. Over a year and a half, in fact. No matter what the Holmes brothers might believe about his psychosomatic limp and longing for the battlefield, there is actual, honest-to-god nerve damage in his left shoulder, and a surgeon who can’t trust his dominant hand is no surgeon at all. The tremors had miraculously eased after moving into 221B, but he’d still only allowed himself anywhere near an operating room when there was a dire need and absolutely no one else capable on call. Really, this was the first time since Afghanistan that he’d not worried about his hands shaking so badly that he’d be just as likely to nick an artery as sew a wound closed. The first time, and it was on Sherlock, of all people. How fitting. How damn-bloody-fucking fitting.

He has to step back for a moment, clench his hands at his sides, draw in a long, steadying breath. He’s not sure which phase of the grieving process this fits into exactly, somewhere between Disbelief and Anger, though he doesn’t think this is quite how it’s supposed to go.

When he’s able to look up again, Sherlock’s eyes are half-open, regarding him sleepily from the bed. John lets out the breath he’s been holding and forces himself to meet that gaze, steps forward, reaches for the bandage again.

“I assume you have some sort of metal instrument that can be heated appropriately for cauterization,” Sherlock says in lieu of a greeting. His breath is still sharp with alcohol, and it tickles the side of John’s face as he leans down to inspect the wound.

“Still on about that, are you,” John replies noncommittally, voice muffled by the jumper over his mouth. “Can you sit up?”

Sherlock snorts, starts to push himself up on his left elbow, but then freezes, eyes flying wide as pain John can remember only too clearly floods him. He’s quick to support Sherlock’s back, helping him upright with the least strain on his abused body. The duvet falls down his chest to pool around his waist, revealing pale, sallow skin, protruding ribs and spine made to appear all the worse by the overly large track bottoms on loan from Kal to replace Sherlock’s own blood-soaked trousers. The pitiful picture is completed by the myriad bruises across his abdomen that John hadn’t been able to properly examine with all that had happened the day before.

Something in the back of his mind is trying to match up the yellow and blue splotches with the impact of a body hitting pavement after a four-storey fall.

He swallows, shakes his head minutely, forces his hands to work on the bandages covering the exit wound across the top of the right scapula. “When was the last time you ate?” he asks, professional scolding and personal, gnawing concern warring in his voice.

Sherlock shrugs one shoulder, peering back at John from the corner of his eye. “Three, four days ago, I suppose,” he says nonchalantly. “I wasn’t paying attention to that.”

“No, of course not,” John agrees sarcastically. The gauze comes away heavy and dark with blood, the wound still oozing freely, the tissue red and traumatized beneath but, at least so far, appearing clean and uninfected. “Lean forward a bit,” he instructs, pressing a hand along the side of Sherlock’s too-prominent vertebrae to ease him down. He works the cap off of the hydrogen peroxide and warns, “This is going to sting,” before tilting the bottle over the wound to pour the bubbling liquid across it.

Sherlock hisses, the thin muscles in his back convulsing as he tenses against the new pain.

“Sorry,” John murmurs, and wipes at the excess with a flannel.  He opens a packet of gauze, careful not to let his fingers touch the sterile padding, and begins strapping it in place with medical tape.

“This wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t have a bloody  _open wound_ ,” Sherlock snarls, his teeth clenched and body trembling.

John steps back without replying, clenches his fists, moves around to Sherlock’s front to flush out the entry wound in like manner.

Sherlock watches John’s hands work, teeth and eyes clenching tight at the disinfectant’s sting. “I’m right,” he says, opening his eyes again to glower at John as he applies a fresh pack of gauze. “As usual.”

“No, you’re not,” John snaps, his words punctuated by the sharp  _zip_  of the medical tape. “And you’re also not a doctor, so how about you let  _me_  decide what’s the best way to treat my patient?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, calculating now rather than just glaring. John sucks in a shaky breath and pushes away from the bed. He doesn’t know where that came from. Disbelief, Anger, Bargaining. Sherlock is still staring at him. He needs to get out of here.

“Drink the rest of this,” he orders, retrieving the bottle of water from the floor by his chair and shoving it towards the other man. He shrugs his jumper back into place, washes his hands again, and makes for the door. When he reaches for the handle, though, Sherlock suddenly asks, “Where are you going?”

John is breathing heavier than he ought to be, but he gets himself under control, turns back to face Sherlock. “To get you some breakfast. You need to eat.”

Sherlock makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and John is ready to put his foot down, to make it abundantly clear that his old habitual starvation is not going to fly here. “Can’t someone  _else_  get it?” Sherlock demands instead, and John doesn’t know why but somehow those words send him into a tailspin, out of control, unsure which way is up.

John blinks slowly, reading the clear signs of distress on his old flatmate’s face – but it’s just the pain from his shoulder, discomfort from the antiseptic, surely, nothing more. “I’ll be right back,” he says, aiming for reassuring and coming out closer to exasperated. Sherlock makes another noise in protest, but John’s already slipping out into the hallway and tugging the door closed behind him.

All conversation halts the moment he steps into the great hall.

Harry is shooting daggers at the others when he walks up, fists clenched on the tabletop around pieces of her disassembled rifle. Most of them are trying to look completely absorbed in their various tasks, Mary and Emily helping Sasha and Zachary with their lessons, Winston preparing the upcoming lunch meal, a handful of weapons parts and odd cleaning materials scattered about. John meets the one gaze that is trained on him – Damien, his rodent face pinched in an open glare from the far end of the table – and scowls in return, but goes instead to the stack of clean dishes next to the hearth, resolutely ignoring the furtive glances being sent his way. He piles several leftover breakfast scones on the plate, a large dollop of jam, a spoonful of tinned meat. Selects a clean mug, drops a tea bag and a few scoops of sugar into it, pulls the kettle off of the grate over the coals to fill the cup with hot water.

“How’s Sherlock?” Harry asks loudly from behind him, forcefully breaking the silence. He hears Damien make a sort of gagging sound.

Fingers clenching on the dishes in his hands, John refuses to turn and look. “Doing rather well. All things considered.”

“Not a zombie yet, then?” Kal’s sarcastic voice cuts through the air. “How convenient.” He gives a quiet grunt of pain, and John hears Emily hiss, “Shut up! What is  _wrong_  with you?”

He turns slowly back around, wearily meeting the eyes fixed on him – they’re not even feigning disinterest anymore, everyone looking up at him with varying degrees of concern and consternation.

Mary is the first to speak up. “They’re your own rules that you broke, doctor,” she murmurs, giving him an apologetic smile before dropping her gaze to the table once more.

“It was an  _emergency!_ ” Emily says, frowning at the other woman over the top of her daughter’s head, seated between them. “The man would’ve  _died_.”

There’s a quiet snort from the far end of the table. “What a tragedy that would’ve been,” Damien mutters.

John turns his head to stare across the room at the other man. Damien glares balefully back, but doesn’t say anything else. Carefully, John sets the dishes down on the edge of the table, pursing his lips as he faces the group. “I understand your concern,” he says evenly, trying to be diplomatic. “And you’re right,” he glances at Mary, who meets his gaze with wide green eyes but doesn’t smile, “we have those rules for a reason, and I don’t...” He blows out a long breath, cheeks puffing out as he frowns. “I’m not setting them aside lightly.”

“Oh, you’re not doing it  _lightly_ ,” Kal nods, “what a comfort that will be when his undead corpse is  _gnawing_  on our  _brains_. Ow!” He glares across the table at Emily; she glares right back and tries to kick him again for good measure.

“I think what my idiot brother means,” she says, turning to John with a sympathetic smile, “is that while we could all understand the need for quick decision making yesterday, maybe now it’s time to put him in quarantine, now that things have calmed down?”

“You forced each of us to undergo this exercise before allowing us admittance into the castle, after all,” Winston adds, wiping a smudge of flour from his eyeglasses before replacing them on the bridge of his nose. “One might suggest it’s the only reason we’ve survived this long.”

“I know,” John sighs, rubbing at his forehead, but he’s cut off by a sneering voice from across the room.

“Fat lot of good it’d do now,” Damien scoffs. “The virus is spread through bodily fluids, and the freak’s blood was all over the car, the floor, the medical table, hell, all over most of us! If he’s infected, we’re all dead anyway.”

“Don’t call him that,” John says without looking at the other man, his voice low. “If he were infected, he’d have shown symptoms by now.”

“You don’t know that,” Damien snaps. “And even if he’s not, we’ve got a bigger problem, haven’t we?”

John looks at him. “Don’t.” He shakes his head, turning to the rest of the group, folds his arms. “Look, we can’t move him out of the castle now. He’s too weak. But... we’ll keep him secluded for now, all right?” He gets a few grudging nods in return, the token gesture enough to satisfy most of their desires for precaution. John nods once to himself and picks up the plate and cooling mug of tea, turning to head back toward the sleeping quarters.

“You can’t let that psychopath in here with the rest of us!” Damien’s voice suddenly snaps through the air, and John stutters to a stop.

“He is  _not_ —” He whips back around, and it’s like he’s been waiting for this, itching for a fight. He sees bright crimson and hears in his head  _high-functioning sociopath, do your research_ , “—a psychopath!”

“He’s a bloody  _freak_  is what he is,” Damien spits back, already on his feet at the other side of the room.

“You shut your mouth,” John warns, stalking back toward him. The dishes clatter loudly against the tabletop, all but thrown from his hands.

“He’s barking mad, and you know it!” Damien says, jabbing a finger towards John, his face pinching up like the sick little weasel John’s always thought he was. “He’ll be doing experiments on people in their sleep as soon as he’s up and about!”

“Shut up!” John yells, rounding the corner of the table, and he finds himself wishing he had something to throw at the other man’s head, something that would shatter and tear flesh, wasn’t he just holding something—?

Damien’s not done yet. “He should have done us all a favour and just  _stayed dead!”_

“You fucking wanker, I should have left  _you_  out there to die—”

“John—!”

“Whoa!”

And it’s not until he jerks to a stop with Kal and Harry’s hands on his arms that he realises he’s lunged forward, fists raised and fully prepared to use them. It takes a few seconds, but he does eventually manage to get himself back under control. He can’t help the sense of dark satisfaction at the poorly hidden fear on his foe’s face, but he doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it, just shrugs off the hands on him and spins on his heel, grabs the dishes from the edge of the table, and marches back the way he came.

“Not another word!” he hears Harry hiss, and then she comes jogging after him.

“You shouldn’t leave your weapon unattended,” John tells her, strangely numb now that the blind rage that had taken him a moment ago has begun to abate. Harry stops him with a hand on his elbow before he can try to open the door to his room.

“You can’t let that prick get to you, John,” she says. “He’s full of shit, as everyone well knows.”

“Do they?” John asks, glancing back at the group in the main hall, listening to the whispers already being exchanged. Even here, the gossip mill is alive and well, and Damien is only too eager to give them all the inside story about the mad, fraudulent detective they’d read about in the papers a year or two back.

“Well, I think he’s an impotent little arsehole,” Harry says matter-of-factly, hands on her hips. When this fails to get a laugh, or even a smile, out of her brother, she sighs, letting her arms drop once more. “Look, they can say whatever they like, but the fact is he’s here, and he’s here to stay... somehow.” She pauses, purses her lips, seems to be considering her next words. “Has he… you know, told you anything?” He looks over at her but doesn’t answer, and she goes on, “About where he’s been, or… or  _how_  any of this happened?” Then, frowning, “Have you even  _asked?_ ”

He drops his gaze, shaking his head. “Harry, I— Not now. All right?  I just... I need to get back in there.” And with that, he turns and shoulders his way into his room without a backward glance.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god, I need to sleep now...


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You **machine!**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot thank Madame_Mary enough for the super-fast Britpicking when I've been an idiot and left everything to the last possible moment, and GlassCannon, for the beta-reading and especially the help in figuring out all the little emotional struggles and misunderstandings that go on between a married couple. None of this would be possible without them. ♥

When John ( _finally_ ) returns, Sherlock has managed to pull the duvet up and around himself into a sort of nest of warmth, and all without the help of his dominant hand, hanging useless as it is in its sling. Sitting up is exhausting, but he is loath to lie down once more, as the change in position has proven so far to be the most challenging (and pain-inducing) part of the entire process. He was able to snag the bottle of scotch from the lower shelf of the bedside table, where John had left it the night before, and is now holding it in his lap beneath the blankets, raising it one-handed to take long swigs (like a pirate, a tiny part of his mind chirps up, until it is silenced by the rest of him that is no longer six years old and also by the fact that it would need to be rum in that case, not scotch) to dull the continued burning in his shoulder.

John sets a laden plate and steaming mug on the table beside him, and doesn’t comment on Sherlock’s self-medicating – after all, it was John who provided the alcohol in the first place. He glances from the bottle of liquor to the discarded IV bag, the direction of his thoughts perfectly obvious, clears his throat, stands awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment, and then seems to remember that he’s a doctor. “Do you need to, ah...?” He trails off. Apparently, even as a doctor, asking his flatmate if he needs to urinate (and, presumably, if he requires assistance in doing so), is still too delicate a subject for poor John’s sense of propriety.

“Yes,” Sherlock says simply, setting the scotch on the table heavily (the relative weakness in his limbs is troubling to say the least) and holding out his hand from beneath the duvet. 

John blinks, staring at Sherlock’s hand, and then, his face reddening, turns to retrieve a large plastic jug (no labels remain on its surface, but there is a small crust of dried pulp around the edges of the cap: a cheap container of orange juice, now empty, likely only picked up for its sturdy build, as the drink itself would not have survived the summer without refrigeration) from the floor on the far side of the bedside table, where it had sat out of Sherlock’s line of sight, set aside for just this purpose. John unscrews the cap, hands the bottle over (rinsed clean but still carrying a subtly pungent scent of citrus about it), and then swiftly makes for the door, muttering something about giving Sherlock his privacy. 

He doesn’t go far, though, which is why Sherlock doesn’t bother making a fuss about him leaving again, just closes the door and stands on the other side of it, leaning against the stone wall out in the hallway. Sherlock relieves himself, recaps the (now relatively more pungent) jug and drops it to the floor, away from his food and drink. He frowns down at his hand, then at the wash basin atop the chest of drawers on the far wall, and calls out, “John!”

He hears a sigh, and when the door opens once more Sherlock is again struck by his (somewhat hazy) observations from the previous night about the state of John’s face, the new furrows in his skin, the deepening of the ones that had previously been present, the darkness of the shadows under his eyes. “You look terrible,” he comments offhandly, and then, “I need to wash my hand.”

John stops, frowning at him, and then seems to catch up with what he’s saying. Shaking his head, he crosses to the chest of drawers and returns with the ceramic bowl serving as a wash basin, a bar of soap, and a large bottle of water. He pulls his chair up close to the bed, sets the bowl on his lap, and holds his hand out for Sherlock’s. The detective rolls his eyes, but acquiesces (he could have managed it just fine on his own, he’s certain, but then John’s palms are still as reassuringly warm and calloused as he remembers), and John pours water over their joined hands and onto the bar of soap in the bottom of the bowl. 

Sherlock watches John’s face, the remaining tension from the fight in the other room apparent in his stiff shoulders and frowning, downcast eyes. The grating, nasally voice that had answered John, nearly yelling words Sherlock has heard numerous times before, was one to which he would have greatly appreciated never again being forced to listen. “Anderson is here,” he says, feels his lip curl at the repugnant fact.

John blinks, blue eyes flickering up to meet Sherlock’s briefly, his hands pausing as they scrub soap into Sherlock's skin. Dropping his gaze again, he sighs, muttering, “Of course you’d have heard all that…”

“You couldn’t turn him away,” Sherlock observes, stating the obvious as John rinses their joined hands with another tilt of the water bottle. It doesn’t surprise him; John’s ability and even willingness to care for some of the world’s most irritating individuals runs far deeper than even his Hippocratic Oath requires. It is an aspect of John’s being that is grounded in him on a most basic level, an aspect that seemingly defies logic, that Sherlock has found to be equal parts confusing and comforting throughout their acquaintance. (Even less logical and somehow more comforting: that this aspect has survived the duration of Sherlock’s absence. He bears no delusions that his presence somehow impacts this facet of John’s personality; rather, it is the assuaging of the entirely irrational fear that he would find John fundamentally changed upon his return.)

John’s reaction to Sherlock’s words  _is_  surprising (John is still surprising, still so unpredictable; another thing that’s survived their time apart) – his brows pull together and down, his lips press flat, and his shoulders hunch as he drops his gaze to the bowl in his lap. “Nope, sorry,” he says, in that very slightly sarcastic tone that he uses when Sherlock has been a bigger dick than usual and John is actually going to be in a snit about it for the next while. “‘Fraid not all of us can simply decide with the flip of a switch not to see any value in a human life.” He sets the basin on the floor somewhat harder than necessary (water sloshes, doesn’t spill; hard clink of ceramic against stone, but doesn’t break – sturdy) and grabs up an unused flannel from the bedside table to hastily dry Sherlock’s hand and his own. 

Sherlock feels his mouth fall open slightly, feels himself frowning, trying to parse the emotions (not his area!) displayed across John’s face as he pushes away and goes to dump the soapy water out of the window and onto the sea cliffs below. There’s something there in his expression ( _fatigue, shortness of breath, something suppressed, unidentifiable without more data_ ), but he can’t— His brain isn’t cooperating, only able to access half its RAM, deprived of blood and awash in alcohol as it is, he can’t think—

( _You **machine!**_ )

He squeezes his eyes shut, feels tension ripple through him, pain blossoming quickly behind it, and reaches blindly for the scotch.

“No, no, breakfast first,” John admonishes quietly, and pushes the tea into Sherlock’s hand. His voice is back to doctorly professionalism.

Sherlock grunts, takes a gulp of tea (two sugars, no milk, just the way he likes it), glares when John holds a scone out toward him.

“I’m not leaving ‘til you finish everything on this plate,” John warns. 

“That’s hardly proper incentive,” Sherlock mumbles around another sip of tea, but at last sighs, rolling his eyes, and sets the mug aside to accept the proffered pastry. “Your sister has a point,” he says, frowning down at the crumbly bread and flipping it from corner to corner in his hand.

“Don’t play with it, eat it,” John says wearily. “A point about what?”

Sherlock looks at him (dark shadows under his eyes, an unusual sagging to his skin, signs of exhaustion; perhaps not being purposefully dense). “You must have questions,” he says, and takes a small nibble at one corner.

John watches him, pursing his lips (classic subconscious sign of having something to say but being unwilling to do so), then drops his gaze, glances at the stack of notes on the bedside table (uneven scraps of paper in varied hues and textures, scavenged in situ; a chronology of Harry’s improving handwriting as her alcohol abuse fell further and further behind her; droplets of Sherlock’s blood dried brown across them).

“It was rather inconvenient of you not to leave more information concerning your intended route,” Sherlock comments. The scone is dry and flavourless in his mouth, little more than flour, water, and sodium bicarbonate in its formulation.

“Yes, well, we were mostly trying  _not_  to be followed,” John says quietly, his voice taking on an oddly hollow quality, as though his thoughts are far away as he continues to regard the notes.

Sherlock feels his own expression tighten at that (cause unknown; likely negligible), takes another bite of the scone, chews, swallows. “Harry addressed her notes to Clara,” he says, and then blinks at the odd non-sequitur, little more than a trivial fact, as well as the unexplained note of accusation in his own voice. 

John apparently hears it too; his eyes flick up to meet Sherlock’s, and his expression has gone stormy, deadly calm teetering on the edge of true rage (most often observed from an angle while John is levelling a killing shot at a criminal who has bested Sherlock in close combat; rarely, if ever, directed head-on at Sherlock himself). John looks away a second later, rises swiftly to his feet (chair clatters loudly against the floor with his haste, nearly overbalances, doesn't), sucking in a deep breath through his nose. “Finish  all of that,” he orders as he turns for the door, gesturing sharply at the heap of food awaiting Sherlock. 

“John?!” Sherlock asks, rising alarm making itself evident in his tone, edging towards irrational panic (don’t leave, don’t leave, I’ve only just found you,  _stay_ ).

“I—” John doesn’t turn around. “I need to go,” he says. Sighs. Quieter, resigned, “I’ll be back.” And then he opens the door and marches out, refusing to look at Sherlock even as he pulls the door closed behind him.

 


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s like a wraith. Every time John looks at him, he half-expects Sherlock will simply blow away, dissipate like fog and so many of John’s nightmares._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting from my phone again, as I'm traveling. I am so tired…

It’s been two days since the shooting, two days since Sherlock came stumbling out of the shadows and back into John’s life – and now, it seems he’s trying to slip away again. Forty-eight hours on and, despite everything John’s done, he’s still bleeding. And not a little seepage, not what you’d expect post-op, but a bright, steady flow out of the ravaged flesh at the back of his shoulder.

John’s done all he can to keep pressure on the wound, of course, has packed on gauze and bound strips of linen around Sherlock’s chest and shoulder as tightly as he dares without impeding his respiration. The fact that the skeletal structure in the region, the joints and connective tissues, have sustained a huge trauma as well is not lost on John; the last thing he wants is to cause additional harm by dislocating – or, worse, fracturing – a bone. As it is, the spike of pain when they change and rewrap his dressings is often enough to make Sherlock swoon, his eyes rolling upward with a small cry as he goes limp, his body shutting down to protect itself from the agony it can’t escape.

He’s visibly worsened since that first lucid morning. Between the malnutrition and the continuing blood loss, he’s grown lethargic, slipping into unconsciousness for hours at a time, waking weak and disoriented and increasingly irritable because of it. They’ve piled on all the spare blankets they can find, trying to conserve the heat that Sherlock’s body can’t hold in on its own. John’s tried to keep him hydrated, continued to administer saline, carefully mixed and sterilized, as the opening into his bloodstream is the easiest way for bacteria to creep in, and if septicaemia were to set in— 

John can’t even think it. 

He’s had a second blood transfusion as well, another litre to replace some of what he lost in the initial injury and subsequent surgery. It’s nowhere near enough, not when it seems to flow in one arm and then directly out the other. John had wanted to give him more, sure that he could spare it, that he’d rested and consumed enough food and drink to make up the difference, that Sherlock needs the blood far more than John does – but Sherlock had snarled at him from his foetal position in the bed that John was to do no such thing, and John’s hands had been trembling so badly that he couldn’t hold the needle anyway. Harry hadn’t been any help either, staring at John with wide, frightened eyes and pushing more food and water at him when all John wanted her to do was make sure Sherlock stays warm, make sure Sherlock keeps eating.

He’s so thin. He’s always been thin, of course, always borne those signs of someone who was more interested in their next high than their next meal, whether that high was chemically or criminally induced. But it was never like this before: ribs John can count with his eyes, singular vertebrae pressing up against his skin like mountain peaks, stomach sunken, concave, muscle fibres withered where they were once maintained for the pursuit of criminals, consumed by his body when it had nothing else to subsist on. 

He’s like a wraith. Every time John looks at him, he half-expects Sherlock will simply blow away, dissipate like fog and so many of John’s nightmares. 

It’s evening now, darkness fast approaching. Sherlock is bundled beneath the bedclothes, eyes closed, delicate shivers escaping him to ripple up the intravenous line hooked into his arm. John watches him, taking in the dark fan of eyelashes across pale cheeks, jerking minutely both with REM and with flinches of pain. His pulse is quick, thready, like a frightened bird caught in a dastardly trap. John sighs, lets his hand drop away from Sherlock’s skin, wanders out into the main room for a fresh cup of tea. He finds himself standing in front of the hearth, simply staring in at the coals and piled logs, waiting to be relit come nightfall, embers waiting to burst back into life.

He doesn’t see Harry’s approach, but he feels her step up next to him, feels her gaze on his face. She’s been like a shadow these last two days, rarely more than a few feet away, wordlessly following John’s orders and requests where all others in their small community have kept their distance. John can’t say whether their companions are more afraid of the possibility that Sherlock could be infected with the undead virus or of the stories Damien – _Anderson_ , when the hell did they get to be on a first name basis? – is only too eager to tell them about the mad scientist sociopath who took such pleasure at seeing an unmoving body laid out on the ground. Either way, it makes John’s skin crawl, makes his vision flash red and his fists clench at his sides.

“John,” Harry says, pulling him out of his thoughts. He lets out a shaky breath, doesn’t remember holding it, looks over at his sister. Harry’s face is haggard, looking as exhausted as John feels, her gaze worried as she studies him. “John, I’m no doctor,” she says softly, “but… this is pretty bad, isn’t it?”

John squeezes his eyes shut, nods a few times. “He’s so weak,” he croaks, his throat thick. The truly frustrating part, the part that makes John want to tear his hair out and scream and demand to know _why, how is this his life?!_ – it’s that he knows exactly how a wound like this would be treated in hospital, how it would be taken care of in a rough medical encampment, hell, even how a combat medic with only the most basic supplies on his person would see to this injury, but here, at the end of the world, here John has _nothing_ to work with. “His blood’s not clotting like it should be. His body should be trying to stop the bleeding, trying to heal itself, but it’s—” His voice cracks and he breaks off, swallowing hard. 

“There’s nothing you can do to stop it?” Harry asks.

John’s eyes open slowly, staring down into the fireplace, ash like downy feathers, a phoenix awaiting rebirth. “There’s… There is one thing. But it’s not a good idea.”

Harry frowns, follows his gaze. After a moment, her eyes light with understanding, and she looks back up at him. “Could you— What is it called, when you burn a wound closed?”

“Cauterization,” John says.

“Would it work?”

John sighs, folds his arms. “It’s not a good idea, Harry,” he repeats, not looking at her. “In a lot of ways, it would be doing more harm than good. The shock from a burn like that could kill him.”

Harry purses her lips. “What are his chances if you don’t do it?” she asks. “If he keeps bleeding?”

John glances at her, drops his gaze again, doesn’t have to respond for her to know his answer.

“John,” Harry says, laying a hand on his arm. “When he… When we  _thought_  he died before – I can’t watch you go through that again, Johnny.”

He flinches, red blood spattered across pale pavement, pale skin, burnt into his retinas, playing out every time he closes his eyes. “This isn’t like last time,” he protests, teeth ground together.

“No,” Harry agrees, steady and constant beside him, “because, this time, you can do something to change it.”

John shakes his head. “I can’t—” He chokes off, feels his voice echo with the twisted hollowness that’s taken up residence somewhere behind his sternum. Harry’s hand on his arm is the only thing anchoring him, the only thing keeping him from spinning away into darkness.

“You can, Johnny,” Harry tells him gently. “You can save him. It won’t be pretty, or easy, but I know you can do it.”

John shudders, gasps for breath, and, at last, nods.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _cut him open, see all his moving parts, find the hurt, see how John has infected him, see how he’s become essential, like oxygen, cut the pain out of him, cut out his heart—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting for this chapter for a long time...

Sherlock wakes to the feel of John’s hand on his forehead, fingers curling in his hair. He breathes in, turns into the warm roughness of his palm, tries to listen as John explains very slowly how they’re going to make Sherlock better. He frowns, wants to snap that he’s not an imbecile, he can perfectly comprehend what John’s saying without him laying it out in such simple terms; but in the time he’s taken to form the thought, he’s lost the thread of John’s words and finds himself simply nodding along when John asks if he understands.

John (and Harry, why is she here?) helps him sit up, helps him drink a bottle of water, because Sherlock can’t do it on his own (when did they start making water so damn heavy? Terrible idea) and then more liquor (gin today, it looks like vodka, but it tastes like gin, must be gin). They have to wait until after dark, John tells him, but that’s fine. It’s all fine. John is here and Sherlock is pleasantly drunk and his shoulder hurts but not so much that he has to care about it. And John is here.

They have to wait ‘til after dark because they can’t light the fire in the daytime. People would see the smoke column. John tells him this while staring at the bruises on Sherlock’s chest and sides and arms. There are more bruises, but those are the ones John can see right now. Yes, Sherlock agrees, there are some truly irritating people out there on the road; best not to alert them to the castle’s location.

Sherlock is very tired. He remembers disliking sleep in the past, but now sleep is good, sleep is nice. Can’t he go back to sleep? (There was another time he liked sleep, when he got sick, in South America. He was in Colombia, and he was very ill, and John wasn’t there to take care of him. But John is here now.)

John shakes his head, loops an arm around Sherlock’s waist, pulls him to his feet. Sherlock’s rather impressed that John manages to keep them both upright as they struggle toward the door. John really is very short, but he’s also strong, and he’s not going to let Sherlock fall. That thought makes him giggle, because he did fall, all the way down from the roof, he jumped, all the way down, and it was for John, it was always for John.

Harry is holding the door open for them while John leads him out into the hall, and Sherlock deduces she’s at least six months sober when they pass her. She scowls and says, “Seven and a half.” Sherlock is still giggling though he can’t remember what about now, and he tells her he’s happy she’s managed not to relapse. Relapsing is terrible, and he should know.

There are two people in the big room with the fireplace when they come out, and ( _thank god_ ) neither of them is Anderson. (Sherlock wants John to kick Anderson out, but he knows John won’t, because John is good, and if he kicks Anderson out then he might kick Sherlock out and Sherlock does not want that. This is where John is, so this is where he should be too.) The people who aren’t Anderson are siblings, a man and a woman, like darker mirror versions of John and Harry. The woman smiles at Harry and the man doesn’t look over at them. He’s crouched in front of the fire, holding something in the flames.

There’s a table in front of the fireplace and John helps Sherlock sit on top of it, and then lie down on his front. It’s too cold out here, even with the towels between his skin and the metal tabletop. He wants to go back to his bed.

“I know,” John says, petting his hair. “Soon.”

He takes the bandages off of Sherlock’s shoulder next, rinses the (open, bloody, painful, damnable) wound with— something fizzy. Hydrogen? It _hurts._ (Make it stop hurting, John!)

“Ready?” John says, but he’s not talking to Sherlock now, he’s looking away, over at the fireplace.

“Just starting to glow,” the other man answers.

John has a belt in his hands, leather. He folds it double, presses it into Sherlock’s mouth. “Bite down on that,” he instructs, and Sherlock tries to comply but he’s so tired, he just wants to sleep. He holds it in his mouth though, between his teeth, and John seems pleased.

“All right,” the man by the fire says, and John pulls on a pair work gloves (heavy, thick leather, good for construction or digging graves) and suddenly he’s holding a knife (blade eight inches long, curved at the tip, glowing red), and Sherlock thinks, _Yes, of course—_

(cut him open, see all his moving parts, find the hurt, see how John has infected him, see how he’s become essential, like oxygen, cut the pain out of him, cut out his heart—)

There are several sets of hands on him, holding him down, pressing him into the table. John leans down with the glowing knife.

God, that smells _awful_.

White hot pain bubbles, boils, bursts behind his eyes, flames engulf him, burn through him, burn away everything he’s ever known, everything but pain, _pain_.

Someone is screaming.

He feels John’s jumper against his face, soft and rough at the same time, warm, smelling of him. John’s hand is cupping the back of his skull, fingers slipping through his hair, cradling him close, and then everything goes gloriously dark.

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When John thinks of home, he sees clashing wallpaper, seventeen steps up, piles of case notes and bits of toxic experiments strewn about, tea gone cold and quicksilver eyes raking over him, always so excited, vibrant, alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, everybody! :)

Clean flannels soaked in cool spring water are draped over the burns, a spare blanket tucked around him, a fresh bag of saline ready to be hooked into the cannula in Sherlock’s arm once he’s settled. John is vaguely aware of the others in the background, Harry leading Kal and Emily in hauling the mattress and bedclothes from what has become Sherlock’s room to lay out in front of the fire, where he’ll have the best chance of fending off hypothermia as his body fights itself, simultaneously trying to survive and to shut itself down.

Sherlock is curled on his side atop the medical table, violent shivers wracking his body as cold sweat breaks across his skin. He’s not conscious, not aware of the world around him, eyes half open and unfocused, bleary, breaths coming in uneven pants. The belt has fallen from his mouth, deep teeth marks indenting the leather, breaking entirely through the thick material in some places. His left hand is clenched around the bottom hem of John’s jumper, long fingers showing white and bony in their death grip. 

John is able to lift him easily from the table, fold him into his arms like a child, far too weightless for all his endless limbs. He carries Sherlock to the makeshift bed, gathers the blankets around. When he tries to move away to retrieve the IV, Sherlock’s hand holds fast on his clothing, preventing him from standing.

“Sherlock, you’ve got to let go now,” John murmurs, trying to gently pry his fingers off. “Sherlock…”

Pale eyes focus briefly on his face before sliding shut in a grimace of pain, a whimper that might have been John’s name escaping him. His grip only seems to tighten.

John sighs. Pulls the duvet closer about him. Settles onto the edge of the mattress next to him. “Harry?” he calls, barely able to look away from Sherlock’s face long enough to find his sister, his thumb rubbing slow, calming circles into his emaciated wrist. 

Harry brings him the saline, sets it up on its repurposed-desk-lamp base while John connects up the jury-rigged tubing. As they work, an indistinct yell suddenly goes up through the air – coming from outside, from the guards standing watch on the wall – followed, a moment later, by a blast of gunfire. 

Kal swears, drops his armload of kindling to sprint to the front door and out into the courtyard, unslinging his rifle as he goes, Emily not far behind him. Harry hesitates only long enough to glance back at John. “The screaming must have attracted some wandering dead,” she says, almost an apology, and then she turns to grab up her own weapon and follow the others outside. 

John listens to the firefight, to the sounds of the others within the castle going to join them, doors being flung open, the quiet clicks of ammunition being loaded, cautious pounding of feet on stone as they pass through the great hall and outside.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t try to follow, waits in tense silence through the echoing gunshots and distant groans, one hand instinctively on the Browning at his hip, crouched low, protective. His eyes are trained on the front door, but every other sense is attuned to Sherlock, to his breathing and shivering and every beat of his heart.

The gunblasts outside seem to match up perfectly with the fluttering pulse beneath his fingers. Thunderclaps composed on hummingbird wings.

At last the all clear is called, and the small stampede of people comes trudging back inside, weapons reholstered and ammo spent. John ignores them, ignores their curious, disapproving, accusatory eyes. Harry stops to see if John needs her help, Emily hovering silently by her shoulder, wondering if either of them should take a turn watching over Sherlock, but he sends them away with a shake of his head and his weary thanks. Soon enough, the hall is empty, the castle quiet but for the crackle of the firewood and Sherlock’s laboured, pained breathing.

He’s still shaking, great shudders running through him, jerking at John where Sherlock’s hand remains fisted in the front of his jumper. The bed is pushed up as close to the hearth as possible without catching the duvet on fire, uncomfortably warm across John’s back and shoulders, but doing little so far to banish the clammy pallor from Sherlock’s skin. 

John shucks his woollen outer garment, has to bend forward awkwardly to keep from tearing it from Sherlock’s grasp, and then, once free, he carefully steps around the huddled mass of blankets to retrieve the tub of water and flannels left on the medical table. Sherlock whimpers, squirms weakly, hugging the balled up jumper closer to himself, doesn’t seem to settle again until he feels John’s hand on him, stroking his head, through his hair, like soothing a frightened, feral cat. 

John sits behind him this time, sandwiching Sherlock between the dual heat from the fireplace and his body. He freshens the cool compress on his shoulder, applies antibiotic cream, murmurs nonsense that is meant to be calming.

Sometime around midnight, Sherlock's breathing stutters to a halt, his pulse flagging under John’s fingertips, suddenly undetectable. John starts rescue breathing, CPR, and a minute later they both gasp back to life. 

Sherlock tries to leave him twice more that night, but John refuses to let him go. He keeps him warm, keeps him hydrated, keeps him from slipping away through sheer force of will. 

He doesn’t know when it started, when the mindless bedside chatter had shifted into something more desperate, more earnest, but at some point in the night John becomes aware of his own voice, of the soft, unending whispers falling from his lips, the promises, memories, demands. 

The first time they met. 

The last time they spoke. 

How sorry John is for those words, for that day. 

How empty his life was before, after, any time they were apart. 

The spiralling abyss of every day since, the single bullet in a well-cleaned handgun, the pleas and tears over an unmoving grave, the order, the  _command_ , that he’s not allowed to leave again, he’s not, he can’t, he  _can’t—_

Dawn comes grey and cold to the castle. The fire is extinguished. Sherlock is still breathing. 

Someone is shaking John’s shoulder. Harry. John wasn’t asleep, hasn’t slept at all, sure that the moment he closed his eyes would be the moment that Sherlock escaped his grasp. He’s lying behind Sherlock, pressed into his back, offering his body heat, staring down at the pale face he knew so well, the swell of lips and cheekbones, the fan of eyelashes, the arch of nose and brow, every bit of him impossible and beautiful and somehow  _here_. 

Harry’s talking to him. Words. Trying to pull him away. “You need sleep,” she says, insists really. John thinks she might have said it a few times already. 

He shakes his head, shrugs her off. “I need to be here,” he croaks, throat dry, sore. “I need—”

“I’ll watch him,” Harry interrupts, tugging on his shoulder again, pushing him to sit up. “He looks so much better already, John. You need to take care of yourself now. You’re no use to anyone like this.”

John sits up, feels his head swim with the change in elevation, squeezes his eyes closed a few times. Wills his brain back into gear. “Harry…”

“Go on,” she says, nodding, “I’ll look after him for you. You just go and have a nice kip, and we’ll be here when you come back.”

At last, John relents, pushes stiffly to his feet. He shakes his head, rubs at his eyes. “Look, you’ll have to go slowly, he’s still at risk of choking or passing out again, but he’s going to need food and water when he wakes up—”

“And alcohol,” Harry nods, folding her arms.

John looks at her. “Are you going to be all right with that?”

She nods again, gives him a tight smile. “I’ll manage.”

“Right.” He runs a hand through his hair as she goes to pull up a chair next to the bed. “Harry.” She stops, looks up at him. John holds her gaze intently. “If _anything_ goes wrong, you come and get me, all right? No matter what time it is or how much sleep I’ve gotten. _All right?_ ”

“Right, fine,” she nods, then smiles, shoos him away. “Now _go_ to _bed_.”

John sighs, casts one last look down at Sherlock’s still form. There’s some colour beginning to return to his face, the duvet shifting subtly with each steady inhale and exhale. He really does look better.

“He’s not going anywhere, John,” Harry says gently, resting a hand on his arm.

He nods again, mutters his thanks, turns away to trudge through to the residential hall. He pauses at the first door on the right – his own bedroom originally, but, being the shortest distance from the medical table in the great hall, it’s since been converted into Sherlock’s hospital quarters, and is now stripped of its mattress and linens. Pursing his lips, he crosses the small room to retrieve a change of clothes from his chest of drawers, then continues out into the short corridor and up the narrow, winding staircase that leads to the first floor and the rest of the sleeping quarters.

John’s listened to Winston, or, on rare occasions, Mary, pontificate about how they’ve bastardised the layout of this castle, setting their bedrooms in places that were apparently intended for storage, or arms, or servants. The fussy old professor is the only one who seems to care much about the history of the place; everyone else sees nothing more than a refuge, strong walls to keep out predators, alive and undead alike. Some few of them seem to follow Harry’s thinking that the place can be a real home, that they can live here the rest of their lives and maybe even be happy.

When John thinks of home, he sees clashing wallpaper, seventeen steps up, piles of case notes and bits of toxic experiments strewn about, tea gone cold and quicksilver eyes raking over him, always so excited, vibrant, _alive_.

He has to stop, lean against the wall. There’s a pain in his chest that he knows very well has little to do with physiological troubles.

The next image that always follows in his mind’s eye is a quiet grave, glossy black stone reflecting John’s crumpled face back at him.

“He’s _fine_ ,” John mutters to himself, squeezing his eyes shut tight, forcing the words to sink in, forcing himself to believe them. He’s here, he’s alive, he’s fine. He’s going to be fine. John won’t allow anything less.

He shoves away from the wall, continues down the hallway, picks a door at random.

The bedrooms have steadily filled up as people have trickled in, small groups of family or friends coming upon the castle by chance or meeting John or Harry on the road while out on a raid for supplies. There are still plenty that stand empty – and they’ve not even made use yet of the _actual_ bedrooms, Winston would be quick to remind him – furnished with the basic necessities, carried in from the nearby town, in the event that their numbers continue to swell.

John is happy just to see curtains and a bed made up here. He toes off his shoes, crawls beneath the covers still fully dressed. He doesn’t have to worry about not being able to sleep in this different bed and different room. The months on the road, sleeping cramped in Harry’s car, had rid him of any last need for familiarity, any bit of it that hadn’t already been erased by the army and life with Sherlock Holmes.

He grimaces, turns over onto his stomach, tries to ignore the clench of nausea, the cold sweep of terror beginning to spread through him. Tries to forget the words he’d whispered, desperate and pleading, throughout the night.

_“You can’t leave me again, Sherlock. You can’t. Not again.”_

_“I tried, I tried to live without you.”_

_“Not again.”_

_“Please.”_

He can’t do this again. Can’t let it all happen again, just like before, can’t let himself fall into this trap. He tries not to remember the sound of Sherlock’s agonised screams, the way he’d clutched at John before falling unconscious at last, tries not to hear his words from two days ago, when he’d been bleeding out on the ground, John’s bullet in his shoulder.

_“John, I found you…!”_

He squeezes his eyes shut, wills himself to forget, wills himself to sleep.

When John dreams this time, he is the one standing on top of Bart’s, and Sherlock is in the street below, running forward, arms up, waving frantically, his voice impossibly carrying from four long storeys below. 

_“John! Don’t! I’m coming for you! Wait, please!”_

He stands on the edge, the wind whipping at his hair, and tries to decide what to do.

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Has it crossed your mind that maybe he needs a little time away from you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter... There are a few Bit Not Good things said herein. Incidentally, this is also the chapter in which Harry informed me that she was not going to sit nicely by and be a quiet periphery character.

Sherlock is lying on his left side when he next wakes, injured arm up. It’s late morning, and his mouth tastes of vomit; there’s a stain on the sheet by his face where something had been cleaned up in hours previous. He’s arranged in what the portion of his brain dedicated to John’s Medical Knowledge informs him is the Recovery Position (For the Treatment of Shock), complete with multiple layers of insulating blankets covering him but for where a cool, damp cloth is draped over the burns on his right trapezius. He’s in the open main room of the castle, his bed laid out in front of the now cold hearth, and he has hazy memories of being brought out here the night before for the procedure.

All of this is peripheral, however, as his attention is primarily drawn to the figure sitting a few feet away, quietly reading a book by the dim light from the open windows.

“John’s sleeping,” Harry says before he can ask. She folds the corner of her page down before setting the book aside, then fixes him with a gaze that is far more similar to her brother’s than it has any right to be. “Gonna survive?”

“Have you finished all of the liquor already, or did you remember to save some for the patient?” Sherlock asks, and enjoys the angry red colour that smears itself across Harry’s face.

“Git,” she says, and drops a bottle of wine – still sealed – onto the mattress next to his face.

Sherlock curls his good hand around it, but won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him struggle to open it. He half expects her to leave now; he’s awake, he’s got alcohol, cheap though it apparently is – the bottle has a metal, screw-on top, for pity’s sake – and he is no longer suffering from any after-effects of last night’s cauterization or the subsequent shock beyond a growing ache in his shoulder, the lingering fog in his brain, and a beastly hangover. He hardly needs supervision to drink his sorrows away.

Assuming he can gnaw the cap off of the wine, of course.

Not that he’s going to ask _her_ for help.

Harry rises from her chair but doesn’t move away as expected, instead coming to kneel next to him.

“Oh, did you want some of this?” he drawls, tapping his fingers around the bottleneck.

“Thanks, no,” she replies, scowling slightly but otherwise failing to react. The jibe has apparently lost its sting the second time around. She produces a bottle of water from the floor near the hearth, quickly unscrews the cap and makes to bring it to Sherlock’s mouth. He bares his teeth, pulling back as much as his position (and his burning, hateful shoulder) will allow.

“Water first, then painkillers,” Harry tells him, in a no-nonsense tone that it seems must be naturally occurring in all Watsons. Sherlock continues to glare at her, and she raises her eyebrows in a challenge. “Doctor’s orders.”

Sherlock scowls darkly, but turns his head enough to accept the cool drink.

“Slowly,” Harry cautions, tipping the bottle up only enough to allow him tiny sips.

When she decides he’s had enough and sits back to screw the cap back into place, Sherlock says, “You make a good nurse.”

Harry blinks, looking over at him sharply, a confused frown creasing her face. “Um. Thanks?” She sounds neither grateful nor flattered. Suspicious, rather.

“Never liked nurses.”

She rolls her eyes, sets the water bottle aside, reaches for the wine.

“I can manage from here,” Sherlock snaps, because, really, why won’t she just _leave?_

He’s contemplating another cutting remark that will be sure to drive her away (how her eyes keep straying from his face to the wine, thirsty as always; or perhaps how she’s clearly pining hopelessly after one of the other residents of the castle, someone who apparently barely even knows she’s alive), but then Harry says, “John told me to watch you, so that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Damn. He’s still thinking too bloody slowly.

“It’s almost _noon_ ,” Sherlock finds he needs to point out. He makes sure to enunciate clearly; wouldn’t want her to get lost in any of the big words. “John’s likely awake by now. Why don’t you go get him?”

“Has it crossed your mind that maybe he needs a little time away from you?” Harry asks in response, sneering nastily down at him as she begins to pick at the plastic shrink-wrap over the head of the wine bottle.

 _He had fifteen months away from me,_ Sherlock wants to say, almost says, but even he can hear how petulant that sounds, how sullen and pathetic and _sentimental_. “Of course not,” he says instead, glowering up at her. It’s ridiculous. John hadn’t left him alone in the last two days combined for more than a few minutes, only when he’d gone to fetch them food or more tea, and he’d always come right back – except for the little detour to beat Anderson into submission, but that was acceptable, because _Anderson_. “What could he possibly need more time for?”

Harry gives him a _look_ , eyebrows raised, eyes comically wide, mouth just barely curling into a smile at the corners. It’s the type of look he used to get in response to questions about the solar system or other such irrelevant primary school knowledge, and it is completely wrong on her face, possibly even more so because of how closely it imitates the original. Damn Watson family resemblance. “Really?” she says, and there’s humour in her voice, but it’s dark, directed at him. “And here I thought you were supposed to be a genius.”

“If you’re quite done,” Sherlock growls, and reaches for the bottle with his good hand, “I’d like to get drunk in peace.”

“Right. Well,” she says, and looks down at him, mouth twisting to one side. “For John’s sake, I suppose I’ll just come out and say it. You and I have never got on, it’s no secret,” she says, and Sherlock smirks, rolls his eyes. Harry’s gaze narrows on him. “What?”

“You and _John_ never got on, either, so I hardly see how _you_ can suddenly act as his advocate,” he replies, smug.

Harry looks down at him, steady, unimpressed, then says, “A lot of that changed with the world coming to an end and all. Not to mention when the one person John thought he could depend on up and abandoned him.”

That wipes the smirk off his face. He scowls, feels his lip curl. “He wasn’t alone. He had Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade. And Mike and Bill and Sarah.” And old army buddies, rugby mates, acquaintances from both university and medical school. His _friends_. Practically everyone with whom John came into contact tried to attach themselves to him in one way or another, mistaking his amiable smile and open, honest face for an invitation to come in and use up more of his time, split his attention away from what was really important. “And _you_ , apparently.”

Harry is giving him a look very much like John’s _A Bit Not Good_ face, but with none of her brother’s gentleness. She tears away the last of the plastic, starts on the tightly wound metal cap. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she says, and Sherlock snorts, closes his eyes, tries to block her out, even wishes to fall asleep again. Talking with Harriet Watson is both dull and frustrating. He’d almost rather carry on a conversation with Anderson.

Ugh. Almost.

“You didn’t see him,” Harry says, “after you took that swan dive into the pavement. He was…” She pauses, and Sherlock can tell she’s looking down at him, studying his face for a reaction. He tries to ignore her, starts reciting pi in his head, wills himself to sleep ( _sleep, damn it!_ ) “I’ve never seen him like that before. Even when he got off the plane from Afghanistan, with that stupid limp, and his arm still in a sling. He wasn’t…” She shakes her head, hair rustling softly. “It was like all the life had been sucked out of him. Like everything he had to live for fell off that roof with you.”

Sherlock’s eyes snap open again, because that _hurts_ and he doesn’t know why. “I _saw_ him,” he snarls at her. “He was _coping_.”

“He was _going_ through the _motions!_ ” Harry spits back with sudden ferocity. “He was eating and sleeping and going to work, and _not much else_. He even stopped seeing his therapist after a few weeks, because _what was the point?_ He actually said that to me, do you know that? He said, ‘What’s the point, Harry? It doesn’t change anything.’ And it didn’t matter how much we all tried to do our duty and tell him it would get better in time – because it _wouldn’t_. And he knew it. You were the centre of his world and you just _left_.”

“That’s not—” Sherlock grimaces, tries to sit up, fails. “You don’t know what you’re talking about—” Then, at Harry’s disparaging look, “I had to do it!”

“Ah, right,” she nods, sarcasm scathing in its cheeriness. “I suspected as much. For the greater good, was it?”

Sherlock glares at her. “Yes.”

Harry nods again, turns her eyes up to the ceiling. “Tell me,” she says, voice deceptively casual, covering the biting edge underneath, “what would you have done if you’d returned from your grand quest for the greater good, only to find that in the aftermath of burying his best friend, John had gone and _offed himself_ ,” Sherlock flinches and she looks down at him, doesn’t so much as pause, “like we were all afraid he was going to?”

There is no physiological reason for the sudden tightness in his throat, the seeming unwillingness of his lungs to perform their designated function. “He— He wouldn’t— He couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t do that to you?” Harry finishes for him. “Why not? That’s exactly what you did to him.”

He’s silent a moment, still wrestling with his rebellious internal organs, but manages to get out, with some difficulty, “I came back.”

“Yes, you did,” Harry agrees, finally twists the cap off, releasing the fruity, vaguely bitter scent of the wine into the air, “which brings me to the point: I don’t like you very much, but for some reason John seems to have become rather attached to you. So I’m going to tell you this once, and once only.” She looks down at Sherlock, holds his gaze with eyes that are icy and promising and exactly the same colour as John’s. “If you _ever_ do something like that to my little brother again, I swear to god I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself. No optical illusions, no miraculous returns from the dead, just your bloody carcass and all the living shit I will beat out of you. Do we understand each other, Mr Holmes?”

Sherlock does not respond well to being threatened. The last person who tried it was talked into shooting himself in the face, after which Sherlock set about systematically annihilating every last bit of the man’s legacy, determined to wipe him and his organization from the face of the earth.

Harry isn’t threatening him, though, not really. She only wants to protect John, which is something Sherlock can obviously appreciate, and she thinks, mistakenly, that this is the best way to achieve that end. He licks his lips, looks up at her. “I would never intentionally hurt John,” he says carefully.

She watches him for a long moment, stony-faced, and then sighs, looks away, holds out the wine toward him. “I suppose you don’t _think_ you would,” she says, her voice subdued, lacking its previous fervour as she helps him drink. “Unless of course you’ve decided it serves the _greater good_ , or perhaps is in the name of _science_. I seem to recall one instance from his blog where you drugged him and tricked him into thinking he was about to be attacked by some huge monster dog.”

“He was never in any danger,” Sherlock scoffs, leaning away to catch his breath. The stuff is _awful_ , like someone poured acetone into grape juice and tried to pass it off as wine. Really, this likely isn’t actually fit for human consumption – but he can already feel warmth beginning to pool in his belly and climbing up behind his eyes, soothing the slow smoulder under his skin.

“Physical harm is far from the only type there is!” Harry snaps back at him. She glares, then sets the wine down next to the mattress, rising to disappear behind him.

“What are you doing?” he demands, craning his neck to try to follow her movements. He can make out metallic table legs, can hear her rummaging about in a bag (canvas, large: John's medical kit), opening a sealed package and a bottle of some sort.

She returns a minute later, a square of fresh gauze balanced in one hand, its face covered with a generous coat of clear, shining goo. “This might hurt,” she warns him, kneeling behind him, and then lifts the damp cloth away from his shoulder to smear the goop across his burnt skin.

Sherlock swears and jerks away, nearly flopping onto his front in his efforts to escape her reach.

“Hold still!” Harry hisses. “It’s just antibiotic cream! We can put the cold compress back on right after.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, shuddering, knows logically if not viscerally that the tension from his resistance is only serving to increase the pain ripping through his shoulder. At last, Sherlock nods, forces himself not to move while she spreads the antiseptic across his shoulder blade, leaving a blazing trail in its wake, both from the chemical itself and from the mere pressure of her fingers. Then, true to her word, Harry crosses to the table once more for a clean flannel, soaks it in cool water, and then returns to arrange it over his shoulder.

The relief is almost instantaneous – the pain is far from gone, but it’s muted now, acid diluted, smouldering ashes dashed with cold wetness. Sherlock reaches for the abandoned wine bottle, manages to bring it, shakily, to his lips for another pull. The sickly sweet flavour clings to the inside of his throat, warming him, further pulling the fire from his shoulder.

Harry steps back, washes her hands before resuming her seat in the chair. Sherlock tries to ignore the way she’s watching him. “You know,” she says abruptly, “John’s always thought you weren’t half the sociopath you claim to be.”

Sherlock looks up at her through hooded eyes, raises the bottle for another swig. “And?”

“And I have to wonder if he’s _lying_ to himself,” she says, voice hard, hands clenched together on her knees as she leans forward, weight balanced on her elbows. Sherlock feels his eyes narrow. “I mean, what kind of cold, unfeeling bastard would someone have to be to make his best friend think he’d died and then leave him to grieve on his own for over a year without any hint as to why he did it or that he’s ever coming back?”

Sherlock glowers up at her, takes another drink. “I didn’t have a choice.” He hates having to repeat himself.

“Hm,” Harry nods, shrugs. “Whatever helps you sleep at night. It doesn’t actually matter one way or another to me why you did it. But it matters to John. You owe him those answers, after everything you’ve put him through.”

Sherlock’s fingers tighten around the bottle. He thinks of the blank look on John’s face when Sherlock had tried to bring the subject up the first day he’d been here, his strange reactions to nearly everything Sherlock had said – anger, outrage, defensiveness, even going so far as to flee the room when Sherlock pressed the issue. He swallows, licks his lips. “I’m not certain he wants to hear them,” he says.

“Well,” Harry says, and smiles condescendingly down at him. “Then I suppose you’ll want to brush up on your _grovelling_ and _begging for forgiveness_ skills. Because I don’t see John taking you back otherwise.”

She rises from her chair, wipes her hands on her jeans, effectively ending the discussion. “I’ll go let the doctor know you’re awake, though,” she says, and disappears beyond his field of vision once more.

He’d like to blame it on the alcohol, or the blood loss, or the shock, something outside his control slowing his thoughts, but one way or another, Sherlock can’t seem to pull her words apart properly, can’t make sense of that penultimate statement, the layered sentimentality built into it.

All that comes to mind is John’s voice, heard on numerous occasions, repeating the same assertion to anyone who would listen:

“ _We’re **not** a couple!”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if anyone's interested, I'm finally getting around to posting some of my old fics from ff.net over here, starting with 'A Toast to Innocence,' which is a (completed!) Jeff/Annie Community fic. :)


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Time heals all wounds, does it?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the illustrious Madame_Mary, Britpicker extraordinaire, and to GlassCannon, the world's most patient beta ever. <3

John doesn’t move when he drifts awake several hours later, his limbs stiff and heavy, his head feeling as though it’s been stuffed full of cotton.  _Depression_ , Ella’s voice tells him in his memory as he stares up at the ceiling.  _The next stage in the cycle. It’s only natural._  He lets his eyes slide closed again, listens to his heart beating out its sad little rhythm, each thump of his pulse seeming to form words to his sleep-fogged mind.

_Ba-bum. Sherlock._

He’s just downstairs, isn’t he? Part, no,  _most_ of John still can’t quite believe that the past few days weren’t all a dream. A terrible, dark, wishful dream.

_Ba-bum. Alive._

But he’s really here. Somehow. Really here, really in one piece, come waltzing back into John’s life after everything else had been stripped away, the world crumbled to dust around him, everything he thought he knew turned on its head by a chance meeting and mercurial eyes that see too much.

_Ba-bum. Sherlock._

John spent his sleepless hours the previous night rehashing all of his old pleas and promises, repeating everything he’d spoken aloud for months to a silent headstone, begging for a different truth, a different reality, begging for the sight of blood-spattered pavement to be taken from his memory.

Last night, he’d found himself praying to a god he doesn’t really believe in, or perhaps just to the pale, fragile figure under his care, the shell of a higher power he had believed in, had followed and been willing to follow far further. He’d offered up a deal, a plaintive bargain, that John would live in this world, this desolate place after the fall of mankind, would never ask for anything easier, never wish for a return to normality, if only he could have Sherlock back, if only it meant he hadn’t died that day in the street in front of Bart’s.

_Ba-bum. Alive._

Sherlock hadn’t died that day. He’s still breathing, right downstairs, will continue to keep breathing, if John has anything to say about it.

And yet—

And yet he still remembers dark flowing red, a broken body crumpled into the pavement, a pulseless wrist under his fingers. A casket draped with deep purple flowers, a name etched in stone. A voice that would never again speak John’s name, never yell for him to  _hurry up, we’re losing him_ , never tell him how lost he’d be without John at his side.

He can’t forget those sights, those memories, can’t erase the things he saw that day.

_Ba-bum. Sherlock._

The things he—

 _Ba-bum. Alive._

The things he _thought_ he saw.

John feels his chest tighten, his breath hitching as the beat picks up, pounding in his ears, inescapable.

_Ba-BUM. Sherlock._

_“You see, but you do not observe.”_

_Ba-BUM. Alive._

This is the thought he’s been avoiding the last three days since Sherlock’s return, carefully tucked away in the back of his mind, repressed so thoroughly that he hadn’t even needed to make a conscious decision not to dwell on it. His mind had simply refused to acknowledge its existence, refused to give any ground to this simple, gnawing truth.

_Ba-BUM! Sherlock!_

He’s known all along, of course, known what it means, what lies behind the door that this one little fact unlocks.

_Ba-BUM! **Lied!**_

John sucks air in through his nose, opens his eyes to stare up at the ceiling. Almost forgets to let it out again.

He lied. He  _lied_. He was never dead, never gone, not really. It was all just a game, just another one of his terrible, clever, blood-drenched games, hide-and-go-seek, hiding from John, left John, left him to grieve and mourn and scream, why,  _why, WHY—_

He jumps at the quiet knock on the other side of the door, sits up, chest heaving, fumbles to shove the curtain open. “Come in,” he calls, and winces at the hoarseness of his voice.

“Oh, good, I was afraid I’d got the wrong room,” his sister’s voice says as the door creaks open a fraction, just enough for Harry to poke her head inside. John tries to smile up at her in greeting, but she takes one look at him, eyes widening, then steps inside and shuts the door behind her.

John lets out a long sigh, hanging his head, and feels her stop at the end of the bed, hovering, as if unsure what to do next. After a moment, he swings his feet out from under the blankets and onto the floor, and Harry seems to take this as her signal to approach.

“Don’t you dare try to tell me you’re all right,” she says fiercely, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to him.

“Is Sherlock—” he starts to ask, voice thick, sidestepping her concern.

“He’s fine,” Harry says firmly. “He’s awake and talking. I got him some wine and a cold compress for his shoulder. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“I should go check on him,” John says, the doctor in him trying to reassert itself as it has the last few days, medical issues so much easier to sort out than this mess that his life has become. So much easier to think of him as nothing more than a patient, a nameless, faceless soul that John has a duty to heal but no obligation to beyond that.

He’s not, though. Could never be.  From the moment they met, he wasn’t simply _some person John had met_. He was Sherlock bloody Holmes. Larger than life. All-consuming.

John makes no move to stand.

Harry says, “John…” and he tenses, waits for what has to come next. “You know you can’t just go on pretending like nothing’s happened.”

He almost has to laugh, because _of course_ he knows that. Denial is slipping away fast, giving way to Anger, maybe with a touch of hysteria, climbing up the back of his neck, filling his ears with a hollow rushing sound, like wind, waves, a storm threatening to spiral out of his control. He stares down at his hands, fisted on his denim-covered knees, watches the pulse at his wrist twitch as his heart continues to beat out its furious cadence, _he lied, he lied, he **lied!**_ “What am I supposed to do, Harry?”

Harry lets out a breath and shifts her weight, looking up at the ceiling. “Well,” she says thoughtfully, “I think you should punch him in the face.”

John blinks, doesn’t look at her.  It sounds like something the John Watson of Before-the-World-Ended would have done.

“And then you should hug the living daylights out of him,” Harry finishes, giving him a wry smile. “It’s what I would do,” she adds, bumping her shoulder against his, “if it was you who’d faked your death and then magically come back to life.” 

John snorts, shakes his head. “It wasn’t all that magical...” Deceitful, more like. Cowardly. Underhanded.

“Of course,” Harry goes on, outright musing now, “you already shot him once, and I threatened the git with further bodily harm if he cocks this up again, so I suppose you could just skip that part and get straight on to the shagging…”

“Harry!”

She smirks at him sidelong. “Please, I saw the way you used to look at him.” John tries to block her out, buries his head in his hands. She just laughs at him, undeterred. “When was the last time you even bothered with a girlfriend? What, Christmas two years ago? Really, John…”

“I honestly hate you sometimes, you know that?” he mutters, rubbing at his forehead. 

Harry continues to chuckle to herself for a few moments, leaning back on her hands, but eventually sobers, looking over at him again. “Look, it’s not gonna happen in a day, or even a couple of days, but – I mean it this time, John – it  _is_  going to get better.”

John sighs heavily, sagging into himself, elbows on his knees. “Time heals all wounds, does it?” he asks doubtfully.

“Time,” Harry agrees, “and finding that the thing you’d been missing was never really lost in the first place.”

That sends a stab of pain right through his chest, into his sternum, his heart, piercing him entirely through. John grimaces, bows his head, feels the wave of rage swell above him, growling and churning and set to break. He swallows, shakes his head, almost can’t speak past the stranglehold around his vocal cords. “It’s not that simple. I can’t just—”

“I know,” she says soothingly, and nudges his shoulder again. “Look, why don’t you take a day off?” she suggests. “Get some... distance. Take some time to get your head around all this.”

John turns his head to look up at her, feels a disbelieving frown pulling at his face.

“I’ll look after the overgrown genius today, or however long you need,” she says, smiling a touch wearily at him. “And then… Well, whenever you’re ready.” She shrugs.

John can only stare at her for a long moment. “I can’t ask you to do that, Harry,” he says quietly.

“You’re not asking,” she replies, holding his gaze. “I’m offering.”

He looks away, studies the flagstones between his sock-clad feet. Tries to come up with a reason to decline, a reason to argue with her. Tries to form a single coherent thought. At last, not lifting his eyes from the floor, he says, “Make sure he eats, and drinks lots of water. And he needs to take daily vitamin supplements. And you need to keep his shoulder clean, keep sterilizing it.”

Harry nods. “And keep it cool and hydrated. I think I’ve got it all.” She stands, pauses to look down at him, bites her lip. “It  _will_  get better, John,” she tells him, quietly, earnestly. “I promise.”

John doesn’t nod, doesn’t make any kind of reply as she turns to leave.

He honestly doesn’t know if he can believe that.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John had fifteen months away from him. Fifteen months in which his life returned to normal, in which he didn’t get called out to look at murder victims, didn’t find human body parts in the refrigerator, didn’t have a flatmate mucking up his dates just to see if he could scare off another one._

Harry is a moron. Of that he is sure.

Sherlock glares into the fireplace and tips more of the awful wine into his mouth (not an easy feat whilst laterally decubitus with his weight balanced on his good arm). Alcohol has never been his poison of choice, with the way it depresses his senses and muddles his thoughts, but at least it seems to be serving its purpose to dull the pain in his shoulder, pocketing the curling heat in his flesh away from the rest of him in a thick cloud of soggy apathy.

What she said about John, about his state of mind, had absolutely no basis in reality, none at all, he is perfectly certain. He could tell her as much when she returns, but the fact that John will, inevitably, be accompanying her down the stairs will be a clear enough lesson on its own and thus render Sherlock’s words entirely unnecessary. He can allow for the hours John’s spent away this morning – Sherlock is more familiar than most with John’s constant needs for food and rest, and with the rapid decline in his mood and cognitive functions if he goes too long without either. Now that he’s slept, the next order will be tea (milk, no sugar, gulped down while still steaming), a shower (or bath, rather, as there appears to be no shortage of fresh water here, indicating a spring, but the plumbing required to form an upright shower system is unlikely), and then finally a proper breakfast (beans and toast, fried egg (previously; unlikely to be available now), a mug of coffee if he’s feeling especially sluggish). John’s sense of medical responsibility will of course assert itself upon his arrival, and he’ll make a point of fussing over Sherlock, insisting he eats and drinks and stays warm, and then he’ll settle into a seat nearby to read or clean his gun or engage in some other mundane task that will allow him to remain close in case Sherlock needs him.

That’s how it’s going to go. Harry will see. He pinches his eyes shut against the memory of John’s (sudden, surprising, startling, bewildering (frightening)) rage, his strange emotional responses to Sherlock’s words. It’s irrelevant.

“What are you doing?”

He opens his eyes, frowning at the new presence that has materialised at his side without his notice (sixty percent due to the alcohol, forty percent to the combined blood loss and shock, he decides; distraction and (emotional) stress are only by-products of the preceding issues, not causes themselves).

There is a child (female, approximately one hundred centimetres tall, not quite three stone, no more than five years old) standing next to his bed, blinking wide (dark brown) eyes at him.

“Thinking,” he replies flatly, and tilts the bottle over for another drink.

“That smells weird,” the girl says, wrinkling her nose at the wine. “What’s your name?”

Sherlock takes another long draw from the bottle and doesn’t acknowledge her.

The child opens her mouth to say more, but is cut off by the sound of approaching feet and a woman’s voice calling, “All right, Sasha, looks like it’s just you and me today. Are you ready to start?”

“Mummy!” the child says, turning and pointing down at Sherlock. “He’s new and he won’t tell me his name!”

“Oh, god, did she wake you up? I’m so sorry,” the woman sighs, coming up behind the little girl (late twenties, thirty at the maximum; petite; skin lightly tanned over her natural medium hue; dark brunette hair hanging past her shoulders, undyed; most prominent markers of heritage indicate Mongolian descent; accent says raised in Dartmoor; not accustomed to working with her hands in the past but not averse to it now).

Sherlock squints up at her, trying to sort through hazy memories. “No,” he answers her. Then, “You were here last night.”

The woman smiles, nodding as she takes her daughter’s hand. “I’m Emily,” she says. “Me and my brother, Kal,” ( _My brother and I_ , Sherlock thinks, grinding his teeth) “volunteered to help – well, _I_ volunteered, and I made Kal come too.” She smirks down at him as she leads the little girl over to one of the dining tables, behind Sherlock. “Glad to see you made it through the night,” she continues, her tone light, conversational. He can hear her opening a hardback book on the table, setting out a pencil and spiral notepad while her daughter climbs onto a chair. “Harry said it was rather touch-and-go for a while there. Where is Harry, anyway? I thought she was looking after you this morning.”

He feels his shoulders start to hunch ( _stop, no, pain_ ) and says through clenched teeth, “She went to get John.”

As the words leave his mouth, Sherlock becomes aware of another pair of feet approaching, and a moment later Harry’s voice calls out, “He’s not bothering you, is he?”

Sherlock’s gaze snaps up, his head twisting around to try to catch a glimpse of Harry as she re-emerges from the hallway at the far end of the room.

John isn’t with her.

Emily shakes her head, smiling as she brushes idle fingers through her daughter’s hair. “Sasha was just making friends, weren’t you, love?”

“He won’t tell me his name,” the child complains again.

“Where’s John?” Sherlock demands, craning his neck to glower up at Harry.

He sees her roll her eyes. “His name’s Sherlock Holmes, and he’s a right git,” she tells the little girl matter-of-factly. Then, looking down at him, she says flippantly, “John didn’t feel like coming down here just now.”

Harry moves to face Emily again, pointedly turning her back on him, but Sherlock is already fighting to push himself upright, kicking off the many layers of blankets covering him, gritting his teeth at the resistance he gets from his (frustrating, infuriating, weak, useless, _worthless_ ) body.

It’s a lie. She’s lying. He’ll go and get John himself, and then she’ll see.

“What— Stop that! Lie down!” Harry cries, rushing over and grabbing up the discarded bedclothes, trying to pull them back on top of him, trying to hold him still, trying to smother him.

“ _I’m_ going to go find John, since, _evidently_ , you can’t manage even _that_ simple task!” he snarls. He gets his left elbow under him, tries to lever himself up, makes it to nearly forty-five degrees before a spasm of pain lances down his right side, sending the air rushing from his lungs and his vision bleeding white.

There are hands on him, easing him down, back onto his side, settling his head on the pillow, tucking the blankets in around him. (Small hands, cool, slightly unsteady, touch hesitant, movements unsure: _not John._ ) He curls in on himself, shuddering, aware of the strangled whimper escaping him but helpless to stop it.

“John will come see you when he’s good and ready,” Harry’s voice says above him, words distant and muddled by the ringing in his ears but exasperation still perfectly discernible, “and not a moment sooner.” He doesn’t respond, can’t find the neural pathways to form speech, and a moment later she stands, shaking her head, and moves back toward the other woman.

“Where is everybody?” he hears Harry ask. “I’d’ve thought you and Lorena would at least be starting the children’s lessons by now.”

Sherlock wills his eyes open, tries to force his trembling limbs into stillness, his pulse and breathing both irregular, his senses uncooperative in the wake of the multiple traumas to which his body has been subjected.

Behind him, Emily pauses a moment before answering, her voice hushed, diffident. “Tom and Lorena are refusing to come out of their room,” she tells Harry. “And they’re not letting Zach out either, not even for school. Not as long as…” Sherlock sees her gesture vaguely in his direction from the corner of his eye.

Harry starts to swear under her breath, cuts the word off halfway through, remembering the small child sitting nearby. Swallowing, she whispers back, “Those idiots can’t really think he’s infected. John said he’d have shown symptoms by now.”

“Well, that,” Emily agrees, “and it seems Damien’s been telling some really horrible stories.” (Damien? Who the bloody hell is Damien? And how does he know any stories to tell about Sherlock? A deranged fan of John’s blog, no doubt.) Emily lowers her voice further, making Sherlock’s ears strain to decipher her next words. “Tom and Lorena aren’t the only ones. Winston, Abigail, Charles – even Mary said she had ‘some concerns.’ They all seem to think he’s some kind of mad serial killer, or at least that he’s unstable.”

Sherlock snorts, doesn’t care if they know he’s listening. (It’s not as though he’s never considered it, but what would be the point if the police are all so inept that they’d never so much as find the bodies, let alone connect it to him?) He reaches for the wine bottle abandoned next to his bed, scowls when his fingers do nothing but rattle pointlessly against the glass, his hand still shaking too violently to be of any use.

Harry sighs again, a loud gust of air expelled through her teeth, shifts her weight. “I suppose we could take him back to John’s room,” she says reluctantly. “Much as I hate appeasing those tossers, we’ve got to keep things moving in here. The guards will need to switch out before long, if nothing else...”

While the idea of any sort of activity in the near future is enough to send a renewed wave of exhaustion through him, Sherlock does feel his interest pique slightly at the proposed destination (John’s room, John will be there, John won’t be able to stay away then) until he puts together what Harry is really saying: _back_ to John’s room, as in the room in which Sherlock was situated before the cauterization last night, the room whence the mattress on which he’s currently lying came, meaning John slept somewhere _else_ in the hours he’s been gone, somewhere with an actual bed, meaning he won’t be there now. Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut once more, tries to keep from biting a hole through his tongue as the flames in his shoulder rage on.

He must have dozed off for a short period, because the next thing he’s aware of is Harry’s voice (grating, loud, obnoxious) in his ear, jarring him back to consciousness. “Come on, get up, I’ll help you this time.”

And then her hands are scrabbling along Sherlock’s ribs, finger digging under him, between his left arm and the mattress, hoisting upward. He hisses, trying to pull away as the movement wrenches at his injured arm, even immobilised as it is against his front. His head is light, spinning, a sudden rush of blood downward at the change in his centre of gravity, and his left hand flails out, catching himself before he can topple over again. With Harry’s help, he is finally sitting upright, and then she stands awkwardly, pulling him up with both arms around his middle. Sherlock grunts, leans away from her, the position ringing with false familiarity, clouded memories of John holding onto him just like this the previous night.

“Stop that!” Harry snaps, glaring up at him, while Emily appears on his other side, supporting his back with one hand and carefully avoiding his injuries as they start to lead him away.

“It’s okay,” the younger woman hums, the top of her head barely level with Sherlock’s shoulder. “It’s just a little way, and then you’ll get to lie down again.” Her tone is soft, very obviously meant to be soothing – a mother practiced at pacifying an unruly child. Sherlock snorts, letting his eyes close and his head hang forward, gives up trying to make his feet work. They’re the ones forcing him to move, so they can carry his dead weight for all he cares.

Their progress across the room is sluggish at best, and he is entirely unsurprised to see his mattress and bedding pass ahead of them – carried by Emily’s brother, Kal, who’d been present at the cauterisation last night, and by the teenaged boy, Caleb, whom Sherlock remembers from the town where he found John three days ago. The man shoots him a sour look as he passes, clearly unhappy about having been conscripted (by his sister, most likely) into helping once more, but the boy smiles at him (friendly, curious, probably volunteered, idolises John – interesting) before continuing on into the bedroom.

The bed is sorted by the time Sherlock reaches it, and Harry drops him unceremoniously onto it, breathing heavily and glowering down at him (figured out what he was doing, how clever of her). Sherlock manages a weak smirk before collapsing onto the mattress, closing his eyes and waiting for them to leave. He hears Emily titter quietly, shaking her head as she pulls the blankets up over him ( _just this once, dear, I’m not your housekeeper_ ).

Sherlock’s eyes slit open again, looking up at her, and she smiles down at him. “There now, that’s much better, wouldn’t you say?” she asks softly, clearly not looking for a response. She brushes a hand through his fringe, pushing the curls back from his sweat-dampened forehead. “You just rest now. I’m sure John will come looking for you soon.” She smiles again, ruffling his hair slightly as Sherlock frowns at her, then straightens, turning away to nod at Harry before leaving the room.

Harry watches her go, then approaches Sherlock with a newly moistened cloth in hand, which she wordlessly arranges over his burned flesh. He ignores her, hears her fumble for something nearby (squeak of plastic, slosh of liquid – water bottle). “Drink the rest of this,” she orders, tilting the bottle against Sherlock’s lips. He wrinkles his nose but complies, acutely aware of the crackling, arid skin across his shoulder and the persistent unfocused quality of his thoughts due to low blood pressure.

He drifts for a time, slipping in and out of dreams – hallucination – visions – thinks he hears the tread of familiar footsteps beyond the door to his room, sometimes pausing just outside, always turning away. Limping, and trying to hide it. No evidence of a cane.

Harry brings him food, more water, whiskey. Refuses to tell him where John is. Stops him far too easily when he once again attempts to lurch out of the bed, intent on finding John without her help.

There’s a ruckus outside, sometime in the afternoon (a little before half three, going by the angle of the daylight filtering in through the window next to his bed). He listens to the sounds coming from beyond the closed bedroom door, people running, voices yelling, the sharp staccato of gunfire punctuating the steady roar of the ocean far below them, and, distantly, the low groans of the undead. It lasts for three minutes, thirty-nine seconds (assuming his increasing inebriation hasn’t interfered with his ability to count time). After that, there are (roughly) twenty-three minutes of silence (what do they do with the bodies? Burning is the preferred method of destroying the infected corpses, but the conundrum lies in doing so without attracting further attention) before he hears an engine rumble to life (large, powerful, old – a middle-sized lorry) and people beginning to trickle back inside, voices tense and quiet as they return to their previous tasks.

John still does not come to see him.

It’s nearing evening now, and Sherlock is halfway through the whiskey, partially because of the pain that rears its head every time he starts to sober up and partially because he doesn’t like the turn his thoughts have taken of late. It’s never been his favoured escape, but he finds that the fog the alcohol brings to his mind now is preferable to the sharp, lightning-fast focus of his old friend cocaine.

If he can slow his thoughts enough, he muses, perhaps it will make time flow more quickly around him, make the hours slip by faster so that John will finish whatever it is he’s doing out there and finally come talk to him. He takes a long drink and lets his eyes fall closed against the soft swaying of the room. The waves crashing below his window are not helping the vague seasickness of which his inner ear seems to have become convinced.

Perhaps John merely needs time to adjust. As much as sentiment, he is also a creature of routine, and a friend unexpectedly returning from the dead (and not as a zombie, which would be rather expected, all things considered) could feasibly confuse the doctor for a period. He’ll need a chance to reacclimatise himself to Sherlock’s presence as well as to work through what’s happened, Sherlock reminds himself, as it’s unlikely he’d be able to grasp the entirety of Sherlock’s Plan to fake his death and go after Moriarty’s network in one glance. John is, technically, after all, only of marginally higher than average intelligence.

So it’s not that he actually doesn’t _want_ to see Sherlock.

But, no, that conclusion doesn’t quite fit either, some evidence is still unaccounted for, nagging at the back of Sherlock’s thoughts like forgotten puzzle pieces. He glares at the closed door (barely more than two meters across the room, surely he could— No, better to save his strength, wait for an earnest attempt later rather than wasting himself on multiple failed ones now). It’s not as though John is _slow_ , not compared to many, anyhow, and in the past he had always wanted to know how Sherlock came by his deductions, how he did all the terribly clever things he did. John was always impressed, even after over a year together, always gasping and exclaiming in wonder, his face lit with an awed smile – but not this time.

This time, he’d shied away from the knowledge when Sherlock had offered to share it, had seemed to not want to even acknowledge the topic. He’d looked shell-shocked, and then almost as if the very mention of the Plan had made him angry.

Now, that is interesting – and _unsettling_ , on some level, he has to admit. Could it be that John is not merely confused, but is actually _angry_ that Sherlock came looking for him? The thought sits like a rock on his chest, makes him squirm uncomfortably. He’d not considered any of the repercussions of his return when he’d set out for England all those months ago – his only thought had been to find John, to ensure that he was alive and safe, to see him with his own eyes since Mycroft could not, apparently, be relied upon. The discomfort grows, begins to manifest physiological symptoms: another turn of nausea in his stomach; an ache in his ribs that is deeper and sharper than the leftover bruises mottling his skin; an idle twitch in his fingers, leading him to pick restlessly at the corners of the label on the bottle.

Sherlock Holmes is not a likeable man. He is not a person with whom many can easily live, work, or spend any significant amount of time. He is perfectly aware of this, and, in the past, he’d had little reason to care, had even, on occasion, been known to take a perverse sort of pleasure in discomfiting the simpleminded fools that surrounded him.

Then John had come along, and had somehow put up with him for eighteen months before Moriarty set about to demolish their carefully constructed but functioning lives, and Sherlock had, at some point, unwittingly begun to think of John as a permanent fixture in his daily life, a constant anchor amid the hurricane of his racing thoughts.

But John hadn’t spent the entire eighteen months with him straight through, Sherlock is reminded. He’d had work and friends and dates and the recurrent need to ‘get some air.’

And there it is. Sherlock feels the answer slip between his ribs, sharp and precise as a surgeon’s scalpel, slicing clean through muscle and organ, all the way back to his spine, sending sparks of cold electricity dancing across his nerves, all the more potent for the numbing quality of the alcohol in his system.

John had fifteen months away from him. Fifteen months in which his life returned to normal, in which he didn’t get called out to look at murder victims, didn’t find human body parts in the refrigerator, didn’t have a flatmate mucking up his dates just to see if he could scare off another one. Granted, the normality would have only lasted the first seven months, after which the dead bodies that used to be laid out at crime scenes or stuffed into their fridge instead began to try and eat him, but the point remains: John had got a taste for calm, normal life once more, the normal life he had so often gone in search of when they lived at 221B, fleeing out into the brisk evening air for a pint or a shag or whatever dull things ordinary people did. Even now, he’s a doctor, a respected leader amongst the people here. They sleep and eat and share the chores and chatter away and they are all so very _ordinary_.

And now Sherlock is back. And John is angry.

The evidence doesn’t lie.

He presses his eyes tighter shut and tries to _think_.

Sherlock doesn’t remember falling asleep, but it is late at night when he thinks he hears the door creak open and familiar steps approaching, pausing to set a tiny, lit candle on the bedside table. Firm, gentle hands check his shoulder, reapplying the antibiotic cream and refreshing the cold compress before at last lowering a hesitant, callused palm to his jaw, fingertips just nudging into the hair behind his ear.

“John,” Sherlock mumbles, left hand reaching out feebly from beneath the covers, but his mind is muddled with sleep and alcohol, and his eyelids are simply too heavy to lift. There’s a shaky, hitched breath from above him, and the touch withdraws. The footsteps recede once more, taking the candlelight with them and shutting the door quietly behind them.

In the morning, Harry brings him more water and liquor with his breakfast, and John does not come to see him.

 


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John has to force away the deep, smooth voice in his head that starts to explain in perfect, cool, Darwinian detail about the natural selection playing out here, how only those intelligent and careful enough to take the proper precautions will be allowed to survive this world-cleansing epidemic._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is it Friday already? This week went by so fast...

John doesn’t quite know what to do with himself after Harry leaves, eventually lying back on the bed and telling himself that if she’s going to give him a ‘day off’ as she said, he may as well try to make up for some of the sleep he’s missed. Not that there’s any real rest to be found behind his closed eyelids – after a few futile hours, he sighs, throws off the sheets, and pulls himself to his feet.

He tries not to think as he makes his way downstairs, towel and spare clothes tucked under his arm, and is glad to see his dithering has caused him to miss the lunch gathering by an hour or more. He has no desire to face the others, their accusatory eyes and unspoken questions, questions he’s not sure he can answer, accusations he’s not sure he doesn’t deserve. He’d put them all at risk, endangered their hard-won survival here without a second thought – and for what?

He refuses to see Sherlock’s face in his mind, how distraught he’d been whenever John had left him alone for even a few minutes over the last few days. They’ve moved him back into John’s bedroom-turned-hospital-ward, and he can’t quite fight the relief that washes through him at the sight of the solid door separating them, opaque wood shielding John from the detective’s penetrating gaze. 

Relief is followed quickly by guilt, of course, and John grimaces, hurries past, continues across the ground floor to the little antechamber in the back corner of the castle.

Once inside, he yanks the curtain closed across the doorway harder than is strictly necessary, partitioning off the area around the spring to indicate it’s currently in use, and then simply stands for a moment, heart pounding as he tries to catch his breath. The sudden cool solitude is a salve on his frayed nerves, the murmur of the spring muffling the noises from the outside world, and the mindless routine of stripping down and wading into the clean, chilly water is a familiar refuge from the storm of confusing, conflicting thoughts swirling around him.

Some of the castle’s ancient occupants had long ago dug around the natural opening in the rocks, creating a shallow tub that’s been worn smooth by time. It’s unclear whether nature or man had formed the pathway for the water to then drain out through the back wall of the castle, cascading down to the ocean in a steady, tinkling stream. The water, perpetually cold though it is, had been a godsend, the final factor in he and Harry deciding to settle here. They still boil it before drinking or cooking, dribble drops of iodine or bleach into the storage jugs they keep stacked in the cave-like basement larder, just to be safe, but it’s certainly clean enough for washing bodies, laundry, dishes. Even better, the water running out over the cliffs gives them a close enough approximation of indoor plumbing, easing the general need for modern comforts as well as John’s worries over sanitation.

He washes quickly, scrubbing wearily at his hair and face, the biting cold of the water doing less to refresh him than he’d hoped. He’s just shrugging into a clean shirt and jeans, hopping gingerly from foot to bare foot on the chilly flagstones – and that’s when he hears the shots outside, and forgets the floor as his blood runs far colder.

“We’ve got a herd incoming!” he hears Anderson yell down from the ramparts, and there’s a mad scramble out in the rest of the castle as more shots ring through the air. John swears under his breath, shoves his feet into his boots, snatches up the Browning from where he’d dropped it in its holster next to his discarded clothing, sprints outside.

The fight is quick, dirty, loud, instinct washing over him, years of combat experience rising to the fore. The crowd of undead has approached from nearly due west, twenty or more of them lurching toward the castle, trying to climb the walls, trying to reach the hot, living flesh and blood above them. John loses track of how many he kills, how many bullets are expelled from his weapon – but suddenly all is quiet, and he finds himself switching his aim from one unmoving corpse to another, searching for a target, searching for something more to shoot. He’s sweating despite the cool afternoon air, his pulse pounding in his ears and adrenaline surging in his veins. His hands are completely steady, his limp finally banished once more.

The cleanup afterward is routine as well. They don gloves and raincoats, arm themselves with shovels and rakes, unbar the main gate to drive the big, old flatbed out to pile the decomposing bodies onto it. They don’t waste any more bullets on them, but Kal goes round to each corpse, smashing in the backs of the skulls with his pickaxe, just to be sure, before they hoist them onto the waiting vehicle. When they’re finished, the dead all stacked like logs on the back of the lorry, they take off their gloves and slickers and wash up in pails of bleach water, being especially watchful for any blood or bodily fluid that may have transferred from the bodies. So far, they’ve not lost any of their own to the infection, and John has to bite his tongue and force away the deep, smooth voice in his head that starts to explain in perfect, cool, Darwinian detail about the natural selection playing out here, how only those intelligent and careful enough to take the proper precautions will be allowed to survive this world-cleansing epidemic.

Tom and Kal volunteer to transport the bodies to the mass grave site, as usual, and they wait, expectantly, for John to join them – and he wants to,  _god,_  does he want to. A few hours escape, a reprieve from the castle and what lies within it, dreams and memories he wants to forget, obligations, responsibilities he’d give nearly anything in that moment  to be rid of. He could leave; he could let Harry hold the fort for a time, let her be nursemaid for a day like she’d offered.

Unbidden, the image of Sherlock’s wan face in the firelight last night rises in his mind, the feel of his frail chest under John’s hands as he’d fought, multiple times, to keep his heart beating, keep his lungs doing their work. If something were to happen, something were to go wrong while he was gone—

John sighs, feels his shoulders sag, feels a force not unlike gravity pulling at him, keeping him in the orbit of this place, keeping him in _Sherlock’s_ orbit, unwilling to come any closer but unable to fully break free.

Caleb takes John’s place, hopping eagerly up on the back of the flatbed to keep watch from the rear, and the three go trundling off in the old lorry. It’s nearly an hour later when the column of smoke becomes visible on the horizon, far enough away that anyone drawn to it, whether marauding humans or hungry undead, won’t be able to follow it back to their little stronghold. 

Everyone seems to react differently after an encounter, especially one as big as what they saw today – this was an unusually large herd, perhaps two or three smaller groups that all happened upon the castle at the same time. Some people, like rough outdoorsman Kal, are restless in the wake of the action, taking a sort of personal vindication in the physical labour of moving and burning the bodies. Others of the castle’s residents are subdued: Emily has taken Sasha back to their shared bedroom, skipping her afternoon lessons in favour of some quiet mother-daughter time. Lorena is distracted with worry for Tom, watching vigilantly until he returns, and she likewise releases their son Zach from his schoolwork, leaving the twelve-year-old to quietly slink out into the garden with a pen and notebook under his arm. Without her usual pupils, Mary is left to herself in the great hall, and she and Winston use the time to indulge in an interwoven discussion of philosophy and European history as they no doubt used to back in their offices at Oxford, both of them preferring to ignore the danger that lurks just outside, pretending things are still as they were before the world ended. 

John sits at the other end of the dining tables, listening to them with only half an ear, mindlessly going through the motions of stripping and cleaning his gun. His hands are steady as he disassembles the Browning, meticulously arranging the pieces in front of him, muscle memory taking over, drilled into him through hours and years of practice, of instructors screaming in his face and explosions ringing in his ears, until he could take his sidearm apart and put it back together in fifteen seconds flat, could clear a jam from his assault rifle without so much as pausing.

In comparison, the silence in his empty bedsit had been deafening on those mornings when John would find himself staring down at the weapon in his hands, cleaned, assembled, loaded. He remembers wrapping his fingers around the grip, feeling the weight of it, the subtle imbalance from the solitary round in an otherwise empty clip, and he remembers thinking, wondering, trying to decide if _today, finally_ , was the day—

“Doctor? Did you hear me?”

John jumps, snapping back to reality with a jolt, the gun clattering back to the tabletop. “Ah, sorry, what was that?” he asks, looking up, disoriented for a moment, until his eyes focus on the figure standing across the table from him. 

Mary blinks down at him, green eyes hesitant behind her glasses, questioning, a mug of steaming tea in each hand. She bites her lip, drops her gaze to the floor. “I said, I wanted to apologise,” she tells him, and steps closer to set the mugs on the table, pushing one toward him before taking the seat directly across from him. “About the other day, I mean. At breakfast. Those horrible things Damien said…”

John mumbles his thanks, gratefully curling his hands around warm porcelain instead of cool metal. “It’s not your fault. He’s an arse. Has been as long as I’ve known him.” The big room is beginning to grow dim now, evening fast approaching; it’ll soon be dark enough to build up the fire for the night, giving the castle some much-needed warmth as well as a chance to cook their food for the following day. Winston has apparently wandered off while John wasn’t paying attention, leaving the two of them alone.

“Still,” Mary says, fingers fiddling with the string of her teabag, and doesn’t look at him, “I’m sorry for my part in… all that. In questioning your motives.”

John shrugs again, decides  _to hell with milk_ and manages to burn his tongue on a large swallow of tea.

Mary watches him from across the table, head cocked slightly to one side. “He’s a very old friend of yours, isn’t he?” she asks softly.

John looks down again, studying the contents of his teacup, swirls of brown meandering across the steaming surface. “Yes,” he says, has to clear his throat, tries again. “Er, yes, he was. Is. Um.”

She nods, looking away, looking thoughtful. “It’s really wonderful, isn’t it?” she says after a moment, and gives him a shy smile when he looks up again. “Finding people – friends – from before. Especially after we’ve given up any hope of seeing them again.”

John finds himself on his feet without consciously deciding to move. “Sorry,” he says, pushing away from the table. His chest is impossibly tight, breath fighting to escape his lungs. “Sorry, I need to— go—”

“Oh, god, I shouldn’t have said that,” Mary exclaims, apologetic, standing as well. “I didn’t mean— You must be so worried as it is, and with him wounded—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” John waves her off, already making for the door, tucking his gun into its holster with shaking hands. There’s some part of him, a distant, half-buried part, that feels something like regret, or possibly shame, at running out on her like this, when she was really only trying to be nice, offering an olive branch of sorts, after the stormy reception they’d received the day previous.

He makes it outside, stumbles down the front steps, stands there looking around the courtyard stupidly for several long seconds. The lorry is back in its spot beside the other two cars, its bed stinking of bleach and the bonnet already growing cold. The fire squad returned hours ago, and John hadn’t even noticed. In the west, the sun is beginning to set; time to switch out the guards for the night. He pulls himself across the yard to the wall, fully intent on volunteering to take a shift, but Abigail takes one look at him from her perch atop the battlement and tells him in no uncertain terms that the only place he’ll be guarding tonight is his own bed. John looks around at the other faces above him and finds only varying degrees of the same sentiment reflected in each. Without another word, he spins on his heel and marches back to the castle, up the steps, avoiding Mary’s eyes as he passes through the great hall, and on to the residential corridor.

He doesn’t pause at the first door on the right, doesn’t let himself strain to hear the sound of breath and movement beyond it, just keeps walking, up the stairs, past all the occupied rooms to his bare, newly-claimed quarters further down the hall.

Grudgingly, restlessly, John draws the curtains and curls up in the unfamiliar bed, his back to the door, the Browning snug on the pillow next to him. He lies in darkness for some indeterminate amount of time, cowering from his own infuriating thoughts, from memories of splattered blood and a sick, dull landing, of words that say one thing but mean another, grey eyes that see him and know him inside and out, know just how to hurt him.

He sleeps eventually, though it’s only for a few fitful hours, hours that are filled with dreams about falling, about fighting through the crowds in front of Bart’s, fighting his way through throngs of undead, because he can see Sherlock on the other side, trapped, bleeding, calling for him—

John snaps awake, breath rasping heavy in his chest, skin covered in sweat turned cold and clammy in the night air. He scrambles for a light, foregoing shoes as he lurches out of his room, clatters down the stairs, unable to form a coherent thought until he gets the door open, stumbles inside, sees Sherlock with his own eyes, lanky form stretched out in the bed, in John’s bed, skin like gilded porcelain in the light of the tiny candle flame and chest rising and falling with steady, reassuring, glorious life.

He can do nothing more than stand there and stare for a long moment, rooted to the spot, feeling the chill creeping up through his socks from the floor, the light trembling as his hand shivers around the candle. At last he sets it down on the bedside table, lets himself fall into the familiar routine of washing his hands and gathering clean supplies from his medical kit, tries not to dwell on the fact that he is absolutely, incontrovertibly, one-hundred-percent incapable of leaving this room at this moment. He reapplies the antibiotic cream, freshens the damp cloth over the burns, suddenly finds that he has nothing more to do with his hands – and he doesn’t decide to do it but he can’t stop himself as his hand reaches out and cups the side of Sherlock’s jaw, his thumb ghosting over one of those impossible cheekbones, awed by the solid flesh and bone under his palm, the warm, steady pulse and soft flutter of breath.

And then Sherlock turns his face into the touch. John nearly chokes on the air in his throat. The detective’s eyes don’t open, but he does let out a quiet sigh, murmuring John’s name as his good hand snakes out from beneath the blankets, fingers just brushing the hem of John’s jumper.

And, damn him, he wants nothing more in that moment than to crawl into the bed and hold onto Sherlock and never, ever let go.

John pulls his hand back, picks up the candle, and leaves the room.

 


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A rough palm against his cheek, warm wool under his hands, against his face, fingers tangling in his hair—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, all my love and appreciation to GlassCannon and Madame_Mary, whose input and support make all of this possible <3

On the second day since the cauterization (less than a day since John’s most recent visit, but nearing two since Sherlock’s actually _seen_ him), Sherlock doesn’t move from the bed except to answer the most insistent of his body’s demands (relieving the pain in his shoulder with alcohol; relieving the pressure in his bladder because of said alcohol; cursing said bodily functions for interrupting his thoughts). He’s growing strong enough to sit up on his own, though still with some difficulty, and the attempts he’s made toward standing have thus far only ended in disaster. Trapped as he is, his mind rages, running back over the last few days’ occurrences, things he’s learned, the new perspective he’s gained from Harry’s (annoying, unwanted, unasked-for) assessment of John’s mental condition – and, most importantly, what he can do to fix said condition.

John’s visit the night before, though sleep-hazy and vague, is not insignificant. It is adequate evidence that he still bears a sentimental attachment to Sherlock, as well as his sense of duty as a medical professional. Without either of these, John might have simply shot his former flatmate dead or perhaps left him to bleed out in that town, and thus saved himself the trouble of their current situation. Were only the latter true, John would patch him up and then send Sherlock on his way, shove him out the door the moment he’s healed up, before he has a chance to upset John’s (normal, ordinary, healthy) life here – but such a case would not warrant extraneous visits in the middle of the night, nor the raw _emotion_ , for lack of better terminology, conveyed in that visit.

For a brief moment, Sherlock allows himself to wallow in the memory of a rough palm against his cheek, warm wool under his hands, against his face, fingers tangling in his hair— But only for a moment. These sensory memories are neither relevant nor helpful.

He lies on his side, left hand curled against his mouth in half his usual thinking pose, staring at the far wall but seeing instead the maze of possibilities before him, actions he can attempt and John’s likely reactions to such, the web of interpersonal relationships among John’s peers here (his knowledge of which is still frustratingly sparse), who of them might be prevailed upon to influence John, to restore his regard for Sherlock.

He ignores Harry when she comes in with his breakfast (still bringing him food, despite his only minimal picking at the offerings thus far), though he does note the plastic laundry basket carried in her non-dominant hand this morning. After setting the plate down on the bedside table, she goes over to John’s dresser and begins emptying the drawers out, one by one, into the basket. When she’s finished, she picks it up in both hands, turns, and gives Sherlock a look as if daring him to ask what she’s doing. As if it’s not obvious. He closes his eyes, tuning her out, and sinks back into his thoughts.

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It’s a magic trick,” Sherlock had said._

His hand is, impossibly, still warm the next morning, still thrumming with the feel of Sherlock’s skin against his. The sensation is just in his head, John knows, though the long sleepless hours since he’d managed to pull himself away have only served to further chip away at his sanity, eroding his ability to separate dream from reality, past from present, lies from truth.

Once, John had fancied himself among the few people who could tell when Sherlock was putting on an act, pretending at emotions he didn’t feel in order to get information or cooperation from whatever poor unsuspecting person he was currently targeting. John had thought that he could see the difference, that he could read Sherlock’s moods and glimpse the man behind all the masks he wore.

Of course, that delusion had evaporated the moment Sherlock’s head met solid concrete, because John apparently couldn’t even tell when his best friend was depressed and contemplating suicide.

And then even that had been a lie.

“ _It’s a magic trick,_ ” Sherlock had said. Perhaps the one thing he’d ever been honest with John about.

He doesn’t stand outside Sherlock’s – _John’s_ – door, doesn’t follow Harry when she goes to retrieve his belongings from his former bedroom, doesn’t stare unblinkingly down at the photo she leaves resting atop the basket of clothes, doesn’t run twitching fingers over the butt of his gun, doesn’t snap at anyone who tries to speak to him. He doesn’t rage and rant, doesn’t demand answers of the man who’d made his life the mess that it is or of the universe that must surely be laughing at him. John simply walks downstairs, fighting his perfectly-fit-but-still-malfunctioning leg with every step, fighting the urge to stop, to open the door, to make sure he’s _still here_ , still alive, still waiting for John.

He can’t. He can’t allow himself, cannot let it all happen again, because one day Sherlock _won’t_ be here, like John had known before but hadn’t yet fully accepted, had been blindsided by the abrupt departure, left starving and broken in the sudden stillness around him.

But not this time – this time, John is going to break the habit on his own terms, break free of Sherlock’s orbit, the downward spiral leading nowhere, nowhere but John alone, again, abandoned in favour of some new, brightly shining puzzle, some glittering genius mind that can actually keep up with the detective—

He shudders, shakes away from that thought, can’t face it, not yet.

As he enters the great hall, approaches the group gathered around the dining tables, finishing their morning meal, John clears his throat, makes up his mind.

Harry was right: he can’t go on acting as if nothing has happened, as if nothing has changed. He can’t stay here, caught in limbo, yearning for some proof that he is wanted, _needed_ , while simultaneously trying to claw his way to freedom, trying to learn how to stand on his own. He has to take action, and that’s exactly what he intends to do.

John stands at the head of the table, waits ‘til all eyes are on him before he speaks. He reminds them of the aborted raid nearly a week ago that brought Sherlock to them, and of winter fast approaching, months of icy wind and rain bearing down on them, tells them that it’s past time they went in search of more supplies. Anyone who wants to come with him should hurry up and head out to the cars now.

Because, one way or another, John needs to get the hell out of here.

 


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _God, man, give yourself a chance to heal!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter this time, guys! Long, slightly weird chapter that is Entirely GlassCannon's Fault. 
> 
> But hey, naked Sherlock, so who's complaining?

Harry comes back after an unreasonably short amount of time. Sherlock’s breakfast is still on the bedside table where she’d put it not a half-hour previous (not that he’s going to eat it), along with vitamins (which he might swallow, if he grows especially bored), water (yes, fine), tea (sans sucre, dull), liquor (essential), and he is far from interested in anything she might offer by way of  _company_.

“What,” he says, voice flat, irritable at being disturbed once more. Beyond her, drifting in through the open doorway, he can make out the distant sounds of twin engines stuttering to life (saloons; four doors; approximately 50 litre tanks, nearly full; each carrying two people, seated in the front), followed by the creak of the large front gate being opened and the quiet scrape of tyres on gravel. 

Harry glares at him, hands on her hips, and then she steps forward and wordlessly whips the bedclothes off of him in one grand flourish.

Sherlock flinches involuntarily, curling in on himself against the sudden invasion of cold air. “What are you doing?” he demands, snarling up at her as ferociously as he can from his foetal position on the mattress. 

“Get up. You stink,” she says, making a face and covering her nose with one hand. “You’re taking a bath right this instant, whether you like it or not.”

“I’m busy!” Sherlock tells her, trying to reach with his toes to snag the blankets and pull them back over himself.

Harry jerks them away, throws them clear off the end of the bed. “Oh, right, wallowing in your own filth, full-time occupation is it?”

He glowers up at her, curling his limbs around himself once more. He’s not about to discuss his thoughts on John’s irrational emotional state with  _her_  of all people – he had more than enough of that yesterday. “And just how do you propose I  _get_  to the bath?” he growls, glaring up at her and wrapping his good arm around his knees. The other is tucked against his chest, immobile in its sling as always. “I’m hardly in a condition to walk there on my own.” Much as he hates to admit it – but if pointing out this obvious, if infuriating, fact will get her to leave him alone, he supposes it’s worth the momentary acknowledgement of his own mortality.

“I’m going to help you,” Harry replies matter-of-factly, stepping up to the head of the bed to shove him into a sitting position. “Come on, up! You can’t lie here forever.”

Sherlock resists for the first few seconds, squirming away from her hands and otherwise making himself as unwieldy a deadweight as he can manage, and just when Harry’s getting really and truly frustrated, he pounces: “All right, fine!” he snaps, waving her away. He’s mostly upright now, and panting slightly just from the exertion of it, which does add a convenient note of sincerity and spontaneity to his next words, “I’ll cooperate on one condition.” 

It’s not as though he actually enjoys his present lack of hygiene (though he certainly had time enough to grow accustomed to it over the past months on the road, when the closest approximation of a shower had been the occasional rainstorm – he’d had much more important things on his mind!), but the fact that it’s apparently such a bother to Harry means it’s the best bargaining chip he currently has. 

Harry scowls down at him, hands going to her hips once more. “You really think you’re in a position to be making demands right now?” 

“I want out of this room,” Sherlock says, matching her steely gaze. “After I’ve bathed, I want to spend the rest of the day in the main hall.”

“So you’ll be able to catch John any time he comes or goes?” she guesses, eyes narrowing on him before her face breaks into a smirk. “Too bad he’s just left on a supply run. Won’t be back for hours.”

He does not allow himself to flinch at that, he absolutely  _does not_. While seeing John, talking to him, making  _him_  talk to  _Sherlock_ , would be a happy by-product of his relocation, it is not itself the immediate goal. “So I have something to do besides stare at these same four walls for another day,” he counters. Not that he’s actually been doing that – on the contrary, his mind’s been active, postulating and planning for the past twenty-four hours – but he does need more exposure to the rest of the castle and its occupants if he’s to further his designs at all. “I am  _bored_. I need stimulus, something to distract me from…” He leaves it hanging, instead summing up with a pained grimace and a vague gesture at his useless right arm that he hopes she can properly interpret. 

 _Aha_ , there – he sees it the moment Harry’s expression softens, her shoulders drooping ever so slightly in defeat. “Fine,” she grumbles. “I suppose a seat by the fire is as good a place as any to get drunk. Now come on,  _move_.”

Sherlock smothers his triumphant smirk, and allows himself to be pulled to his feet.

The trip to the castle’s makeshift WC, despite being a relatively short distance, is surprisingly more difficult than Sherlock remembers from the last time he came out here, for the cauterisation two nights ago. He’s quite a bit more sober now than he’d been on that occasion, but Harry is also smaller and less sturdy than her brother, and she doesn’t hold Sherlock nearly as tightly about the waist. 

It takes them a frustratingly long time to struggle across the width of the great hall, passing from the arched mouth of the residential corridor to a similar doorway directly across from it. They’re both breathing heavily by the time they reach their destination, and Harry leaves Sherlock to lean against the wall just inside the chamber while she steps back to pull the curtain closed behind them (thick, heavy material, opaque, like that over the window in his room; hung from a wooden curtain rod attached to the wall above the doorway with long nails driven into the thin spaces between the stones; a new addition since they took up inhabitance here). He squeezes his eyes shut, feels the floor swaying under his feet, his blood pressure and inner ear both rebelling against this movement after so much time spent horizontal. 

“Well,” Harry says, and Sherlock forces his eyes open. 

The room in which they now stand is small, dark, cave-like, an impression that is not dispelled by the naturally formed walls that make up one half of the structure, worn smooth and hollow by wind and water and time, and around which the entirety of the rest of the castle is built. At the very back corner, the fresh water spring burbles musically, spilling into the stone tub that takes up the majority of the room, the water swirling within it before flowing out through a wide hole in the back wall, a clear waterfall straight down to the ocean crashing below. There is evidence of an ancient stone banister across the opening; more recently, it’s been reinforced with cement blocks and wooden planks. Wouldn’t want any hapless bather to slip out through there by accident (always thinking in terms of safety, John, how practical). 

He hears Harry sigh and take a step toward him, away from the doorway. “Do you need help?”

“No.” He pushes away from the wall, determinedly reaching for the knot at the front of his trousers (cheap, soft track bottoms, far too large for him, barely clinging to his hips) with his left hand. In the past, Sherlock had proudly considered himself (nearly) ambidextrous, a skill he’d practiced periodically over the years, since one never knew when one’s dominant hand might become incapacitated, as in just such a situation as the one in which he’s currently found himself. But he is now quickly finding that  _nearly_  ambidextrous is a far cry from  _actually_ ambidextrous, especially after one has sustained a traumatic wound, undergone further traumatic field surgery, lost large quantities of blood, partaken of far too much alcohol, and essentially been on a hunger strike. 

His fingers are shaking and clumsy, his eyes refusing to focus on the thin slips of fabric under his hand, and when he begins to lose his balance and tip slowly forward, that is apparently the last straw for Harry Watson.

“Oh – let me!” she says, swatting his hand away and pulling the knot apart in one swift move.

Sherlock sags against the wall, glaring petulantly over the top of her head as she steps back. He expects her to excuse herself then, finally disappear out through the curtain and leave him in peace, but she only backs up a few paces, standing with arms folded over her chest, waiting. 

After about nine seconds of silence (attempting to hide the fact that he still hasn’t quite got his breath back after the walk over), Harry says, “Do you need me to help you finish undressing?” Her tone is exasperated, but her words are measured – impatient, but trying not to appear as such.

“Of course not,” Sherlock snaps, shooting her a glare.

“Well then, what are you waiting for?”

He looks across at her again, raising his eyebrows imperiously, and makes sure to speak very slowly. “Privacy. It is customary when one is bathing, is it not?”

“Privacy is for people who can stand upright on their own,” she returns glibly. He glowers at the wall, refusing to acknowledge her, and she sighs, shaking her head, then adds, voice teasing, wheedling, “I promise not to look.” 

Sherlock bites down on a retort, pushing away from the wall. He feels himself start to wobble almost instantly, but a moment later Harry’s small hands are on his back, steadying him. Grunting, he ignores her and bends to relieve himself of his trousers and pants, shoving them down his legs and at last stepping out of them. 

“If it helps,” Harry says, the smirk obvious in her voice as she nudges him toward the tub, “I can assure you I have never once in my life found the nude male form attractive.”

“How flattering,” he replies dryly. “You’ll be pleased to know then that I find absolutely nothing about  _you_  attractive either.” He steps over the stone rim of the tub, down into the knee-deep water, his good arm flung out for balance and Harry’s hands still on his shoulder blades. He hisses, gritting his teeth, helpless to fight the shivers that erupt across his skin at the near-freezing temperatures. 

“God, you reek,” Harry comments again.

(The part of Sherlock’s brain that’s been honed since primary school for this kind of interaction informs him that now would be an opportune time for her to make a jab to the effect that perhaps his _smell_ is why John doesn’t want to come to see him – but she doesn’t.)

Sherlock frowns, lowering himself into the icy water, and decides once again to ignore her. 

Harry continues to help him until he’s fully seated on the floor of the tub. “Think you can manage not to flop over and drown yourself for a couple of minutes?” she asks, hands on his shoulders.

“Of course,” Sherlock sniffs disdainfully (spoiled somewhat by the sudden chattering of his teeth). 

Harry shakes her head, inexplicably smiling and reaching up to ruffle his hair as she pushes to her feet. Sherlock sneers, ducking away from her hand, but she’s already crossing to the far corner of the room where a stack of large, opaque plastic containers await. Opening one of them, she muses aloud, “You look like an Herbal Essences type,” and pulls out a violently pink bottle for him to see.

Sherlock glares, but she just smirks and sets the shampoo on the floor next to her. Out of the other containers come a clean flannel, body scrub, toothpaste, a toothbrush still in its packaging. She also produces a small bucket (cheap plastic, rounded edges, brightly coloured: a child’s toy), which she brings over with the other supplies. “You can use this to rinse,” she tells him, indicating the bucket while she arranges the toiletries on the edge of the tub within reach of his left hand. “I’m gonna go get you some clean clothes,” she says next, straightening once more and stepping away. “I’m sure Kal won’t mind lending you another set. He’s almost as tall as you, though not as scrawny, but you’ll just have to make do.”

“I don’t suppose you could acquire a razor from ‘Kal’ as well,” Sherlock grumbles, rubbing his hand across his jaw.

Harry glances back at him, feigning surprise. “Oh, are you in need of a shave? And here I was thinking you just had dirt on your face.” He scowls at her (he’s well aware that he’s never been particularly proficient at growing facial hair – it sprouts in thin, downy clumps across his cheeks and lip, never coalescing into anything remotely resembling a proper beard or moustache – but he’s never  _wanted_  a beard or moustache) and she smirks. “There’s disposable razors in with the other stuff here, but honestly you might just have to deal with being scruffy for a bit, unless you want to risk using a blade near your throat left-handed. And lord knows I’m not doing it for you, so don’t even bother asking.”

“As though I’d trust  _you_  with a blade near my throat,” Sherlock retorts, and her smirk only widens. 

“Better be quick,” she says. “No one likes to stay in that water longer than they have to.” And with that, she disappears out past the curtain.

Sherlock glares after her, then turns to the task of washing. He scrubs and rinses and scrubs some more, allowing himself to revel in the feel of being truly clean for the first time in months, and finds he can admit to feeling somewhat grateful that the people here (mostly John) have miraculously had the foresight to lay in a supply of soaps and other modern conveniences. They’ll eventually need to turn to making their own, of course, once the bones of civilization have been entirely picked clean – something else to add to his plans, as he suspects no one else in this castle has the ability to extrapolate the basic chemical compounds and reactions required to produce usable soap.

At long last, with every other part of him rubbed raw and aching with the cold, Sherlock turns his attention to his injured shoulder. The skin is beginning to heal, at least, forming a hard, flaky scab across the burns. It’s still sore, tender, the surface somewhat warmer to the touch than the rest of his flesh, though not so much as to indicate infection. Beneath the external pull and crackle of the burn, there is the deeper, sharper ache of the original gunshot wound, the muscle fibres barely starting to knit themselves back together. He flexes his right hand – and has to bite down on the flare of pain that the movement sends coursing through his arm. Still a long way from fully healed.

“Knock knock,” Harry’s voice sounds from the other side of the curtain, pulling his attention away from his examination, and a moment later she ducks inside, a towel draped over one arm and a fresh set of clothing tucked under the other. “About finished?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answers, and reaches behind him for the rim of the tub with his good hand, hauls himself up the short distance so that he’s sitting on it, out of the water. His arm is wobbling already (merely from the cold; _not_  due to fatigue).

“All right, come on,” Harry says, bending to get her arms around his middle and pulling up.

Her hands slip against his wet skin, though, and Sherlock cries out,  the angle wrenching on his shoulder, sending white-hot pain blossoming outward from the joint, obscuring his vision as everything else is swallowed up by pounding, angry, agony.

“Shit, sorry, sorry!” Harry’s saying from behind him, snatching her hands back. Sherlock doesn’t respond, is focused entirely on clamping down on the pain, his eyes and jaw locked tight shut, his breathing ragged and heavy. “God, that was so _stupid_ ,” Harry berates herself, and Sherlock can hear her wringing her hands behind him. They sit in silence for a long minute, Harry leaning away from him while Sherlock’s breath comes in uneven, ragged gasps. “Um, do you,” she starts to ask, swallows audibly, tries again. “Do you want help drying off?”

“I—” His intent is to snarl at her, to release all the pain and frustration currently swirling under his skin into his words, hurl them at her like stones until she finally  _leaves_  – but his voice is gone, choked off by the shudders shaking him. He can’t do  _anything_ , not until the bloody pain recedes, until he no longer feels as though he’s been hollowed out and filled up with burning acid. 

Harry sighs, bites her lip, then tentatively reaches up to start rubbing the towel over his wet hair. “Sorry,” she mumbles again. 

Despite himself, Sherlock feels the tension slowly begin to drain from his neck and shoulders at her ministrations, her hands making small circles against his scalp, fingers massaging gently. His arm and shoulder are still aching, but the pain is beginning to dull, the sharp, throbbing stabs easing as his muscles relax.

“Don’t you go to sleep on me,” Harry warns when his head starts to droop forward, jabbing a finger into his spine. Her voice is back to normal, he notices, no longer subdued and apologetic. She pulls the towel off of his head and starts to rub it across his back and arms, taking extra care to avoid the wound, and then slings it over his left shoulder for him to grab. “Up to you to do your front,” she says, standing. “Just don’t drop the towel in the water.”

Sherlock scowls at her patronizing tone but doesn’t respond, yanking the towel off of his shoulder to dry himself. He pulls his feet out of the water and gingerly turns around to set them on dry ground once more, running the towel down his shins and around his ankles, wiping away the last clinging droplets of icy water. Harry chooses that moment to turn back around from retrieving the new set of clothes she’d dropped against the wall. She blinks at him once, and then squeezes her eyes shut with a grimace. 

“God, this is so  _not_  part of the normal sister-in-law duties,” she groans, shaking her head as she approaches.

He ignores that comment. ( _We are **not** a couple._ )

She holds out a pair of boxer shorts toward him, keeping her eyes firmly averted. When Sherlock only eyes them suspiciously (plain cotton, thin and soft; signs of multiple washings and wearings; a vague scent of detergent about them; waistband a size too big for Sherlock; not in the style he remembers seeing amongst John’s laundry back at Baker Street), she adds, “I promise they’re clean.”

“Obviously,” he snaps, wrinkling his nose as he reaches to accept the garment. He gets both feet in and only runs into trouble once he’s pulled them up around his thighs: he can’t both lift himself up from his seated position and pull the pants into place at the same time, not with only one working hand. He could stand up to finish the job, but while he wouldn’t say he’s  _avoiding_  doing so, he is rather loath to repeat any of the recent falling-over-and-Harry-catching-him debacles. 

“Need help?” Harry asks, the mocking smile in her voice obvious even with her face turned away as it is.

“ _No_ ,” Sherlock spits, and then sets about wriggling the rest of the way into the shorts, which involves a lot of yanking on the fabric and far more chaffing on his backside than he’d really care to think about. (Why on earth hasn’t anyone ever sanded this bloody tub smooth?) With one thing and another, though, he is at last successful, a fact of which he informs Harry with a grunted, “All right. I am at least marginally decent now.”

Harry peeks down at him carefully at first, as though unsure if she can trust his words. At his glare, she grins, offering him a pair of soft-worn track bottoms next, similar to his discarded set in every way but colour. “Never can be too careful with you exhibitionist types.”

Sherlock snorts, taking the track pants. “I hardly need to expose myself to you to make a point.” He gets his feet inside the legs, pulls them up to his knees, and then starts to push himself up to standing. Halfway there, Harry catches his left arm just below the elbow, steadying him as he rises to his full height.

“Hmph. Says the man who walked into Buckingham Palace wearing nothing but his bedsheet.”

Sherlock grimaces, his head swimming with the sudden change in altitude. “That was a show of strategic defiance.”

“What, against clothes?” Harry’s fingers tighten around his elbow, her other hand ghosting near the small of his back, ready to catch him if he starts to fall.

“Against my brother. He was being annoying – nearly as annoying as you.”

Harry grins. “Still the reigning champion, then. I’m so proud.” He pulls at the drawstrings, cinching the waistband tighter over his hips, but he can no more tie the knot one-handed than he could untie it. Harry gives a long suffering sigh and takes the strings from him, deftly securing them before stepping away again.

There’s one last article of clothing slung over her arm now: not a shirt, but what appears to be a zip-front hooded sweatshirt, baggy, soft, and matching the track bottoms.

“And just what do you expect me to do with that?” Sherlock asks, eying the cheap material warily.

“Wear it, of course,” she says, holding it open for him. “Come on, this’ll be a lot more comfortable – and warmer – than going about topless again.”

Sherlock scowls at her, but with the chill from the water still lingering in his extremities, the offer of warmth is all too tempting. Huffing, he holds out his left arm and lets her slip it into the oversized sleeve.  “And now?” he asks, arching a brow at her, because it is utterly impossible for him to repeat the motion with his other arm.

“And now, you shut up,” Harry replies, pulling the jacket around and draping it over his injured shoulder, the sleeve hanging empty at his side. He tenses at the initial contact with his skin, but the fabric is soft enough that it doesn’t seem it will cause any additional pain. He forces himself to relax, glancing down at Harry once more. “There,” she says proudly. “And we can even zip it up if you get cold.” She demonstrates, closing the sweatshirt with a swift upward pull on the zipper, trapping his immobilised right arm inside.

“Surely you’re joking,” Sherlock says flatly, glaring at her. “This looks ridiculous.”

“No more ridiculous than you usually look,” Harry quips, “and don’t call me Shirley.”

“What?”

She waves him off, smiling and shaking her head as she goes to open the curtain once more. “All right, mister genius detective, a deal’s a deal,” she proclaims, turning back towards him. “You wanted to sit by the fire after your bath, so come on. Think you can make it there on your own?”

Sherlock snorts and, head held high, strides determinedly past her. The first few steps are steady, balanced. The next few, he feels himself begin to list to one side. He’s nearly halfway to the dining tables in the main hall, Harry hovering a step behind him, but his breathing is growing laboured, his limbs shaking, his stomach roiling rebelliously—

“Shit!”

He hears Harry’s voice before he realises he’s falling, feels her arms lock around his middle, jerking him to a stop. 

“Fuck fucking bloody fucking shit—” Harry grits out, leaning back to use her own weight as a counterbalance to his downward momentum. “Damn it, I knew this was a bad idea. Come on, you're going back to bed,” she tells him, pulling at him in the direction of the bedroom.

“No—” Sherlock tries to protest, but his voice comes out thin and rasping, even the task of pushing the air from his lungs proving too great for his infernal, weak body. “I just— need to sit—” He’s attempting, vainly, to get his feet to cooperate and his legs to hold him, but his head is light, spinning, and his limbs are so heavy, weighing him down, pulling him to the floor.

“If I set you in a chair right now, you’re going to keel over and fall flat on your face,” Harry tells him savagely, gritting her teeth with the effort of bearing his weight. She shakes her head, hauls him another step toward the sleeping quarters. “You need to lie down.”

“What I  _need_ —” he snarls in response, swinging his head back around to try to take in as much of the dining hall as he can before it slips out of view. What he needs is time to observe the people of this castle, to determine which ones would be the most amenable, the most suitable for his plans.

Harry nods wearily and doesn’t stop their progress toward the bedroom. “I know, I know, you need to see John.” Sherlock turns back to glare furiously down at her, but she ignores him until they’re through the door and he’s slumped down on the bed once more, head swimming and breathing far too laboured for such a short walk.

“I… I need... to get out of here,” Sherlock pants, fighting to keep himself upright with his good arm under him. It’s as though the mattress has its own gravitational field, and he feels himself being dragged downward, feels his body growing heavier with every passing second. “I need…”

“You need to _rest_ ,” Harry tells him emphatically. “This was a big step, getting out to the bath, after doing nothing but drink yourself blind for the last few days. God, man, give yourself a chance to heal!”

Sherlock shakes his head, manages to lift his eyes enough to level a glower at her. “I’ve done… nothing. For days,” he complains. “Every day in here… going to waste…”

Harry rubs at her forehead, pinches the bridge of her nose, cards her fingers back through her hair. “Look, I get it, all right?” she snaps. “You’re bored, fine. I could’ve sworn John had a novel he was reading in here—”

“Nonsensical drivel,” Sherlock gripes, his lip curling at the thought of the dusty paperback he’d found in the drawer of the bedside table. He never could understand the appeal of those spy novels John reads, all idiotic dialogue and improbable physics. 

“Fine. Fine!” Harry throws her hands up. “I’ll find something to keep you occupied. All right?! Just— _stay there!_ ” And she spins on her heel, marching out of the room and swinging the door shut behind her.

Sherlock lets his eyes fall closed, feels himself sinking deeper into his pillow, his pulse pounding loud in his ears. He could try to make a break for the door again, get himself out of here with or without Harry’s help… but that would require standing. And sitting up. And moving at all.

He stays where he is. 

Several quiet minutes go by, and he’s just starting to doze off when the door opens again and Harry steps back inside, a large hardback book clutched in one arm.

“Here, I thought this’d be right up your alley,” she says, dropping the heavy volume onto the comforter next to him. “You’d  _better_  like it; I had to promise to help Winston with the cooking for the next two  _weeks_  to get him to lend it to me!”

Sherlock lifts his head enough to glance over the cover ( _Public Executions: From Ancient Rome to the Present Day_ , by one Nigel Cawthorne, well-known historian, or so the jacket flap claims). Although it’s not relevant to his current pursuits, he makes a mental note to read it once he’s got everything else sorted here. Right up his alley indeed. 

“Thank you,” he mutters absently, laying his head back down on the pillow and waiting for her to leave. 

Harry shakes her head, setting a spiral notebook and biro pen on the bedside table as well. “I just don’t want to listen to you complain anymore.” Sherlock looks at the pen and paper, then back up at her, and she shrugs. “Figured you could… I dunno, doodle or something.”

He stares at her, eyes heavy-lidded and weary. “Doodle,” he echoes.

Harry’s hands fly to her hips. “Look, if you don’t want it—”

“No, it’s— It’s fine.” It’s actually perfect, and will be of far more use for furthering his plans than the textbook, interesting or not. “Thank you,” he says again, a hint of sincerity creeping its way into his voice.

Harry lets her hands fall away, instead folding her arms over her chest. “Right. Well.” She goes to the door, pauses, turns back. “Look, we can try again later. To get you out of here, out in the main room, I mean. After lunch, if you’re feeling up to it.” Sherlock looks up at her and she shrugs again. “I’d hate being cooped up in here too. So just – get some rest. Okay?”

He nods slowly, feeling sleepy, bemused, and she turns away, shaking her head and smiling slightly as she once again pulls the door closed behind her.

 


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe this is what the world looks like through Sherlock’s eyes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zombies make everything better. That is all.

The weather is uncharacteristically clear, and they make good time out to one of the towns several hours southwest of the castle. It’s one they’ve not visited in the last month, part of the rotation they maintain so as to avoid their habits becoming predictable. It was a lesson John had internalised while on deployment in Afghanistan, but some of his companions had had to learn the hard way when they’d insisted on visiting the same town multiple times in a two week stretch – the last of which had found them barely surviving an ambush by a hostile group that had observed their movements and lain in wait for them to return.

What has the world come to, John wonders, when other humans somehow pose more of a threat to their survival than the undead.

According to the notes made on their map, the last time they visited this town they had found the supermarket well-stocked and had met only minimal zombie activity in the area. They arrive without incident and load up the boots and back seats of both cars with non-perishable items, canned meat, dried fruit, powdered milk, jugs of bleach, soap, toothpaste, plasters. It’s half two in the afternoon when they finish, and they pause for a small lunch of cold beans and crisps before setting out for home.

On the drive back, they finally run into trouble.

They’re an hour out from the town, in the middle of nowhere, driving through the lush, rolling hills of the Scottish countryside. Charles and Abigail, in the lead car, briefly disappear around a bend in the road, skirting the foot of a steep hill that blocks John’s view of them. Seconds later, he hears their brakes squeal and has just enough time to slow and swerve to avoid hitting them from the rear.

Beside him, Caleb breathes a curse, hands tightening on the shotgun across his lap.

It’s a huge herd, larger than any John’s seen since those first days at the refugee camps, thirty or forty bodies at least, and they’re already clustering about the other car, pushing against each other and pressing in around the doors and windows, beginning to rock it on its wheels as more of them lurch forward, reaching for their prey. Charles throws his car into reverse and revs the engine, but with the other vehicle behind them, they have nowhere to go. John backs up fast, spins the car around to face back the way they’d come, and drives a short distance before stopping to wait for Charles and Abigail to catch up. He watches them reverse hard in the rear-view mirror, but there are zombies pounding at the windows, pulling themselves up over the boot, clawing at the bumper as they’re knocked under the tyres by the car’s backwards motion.

“Come on, Charles,” he mutters, fingers tight on the steering wheel and foot itching to slam down on the accelerator. Not for the first time, John wishes for a jeep or a humvee; any type of off-road vehicle would be better than the small, low-riding sedans they’re currently driving. He sees another corpse fall under the rear of the struggling car, half-decomposed arms flailing, until its head disappears with a wet pop beneath a tyre and the body finally lies still. The dead are piling up both around and under the car as they try to reverse, slipping beneath spinning wheels and pounding at the glass. John sees the left tyres lift away the pavement for a moment, sees the car’s frame shudder dangerously.

“Doc,” Caleb says, voice tight, watching through his mirror on the other side of the car.

“I know,” John grits out, and presses down on the fuel pedal, shooting away from the small group of stragglers starting to pick at their own car. “You’ve got extra ammo?” he asks, and hits the brakes, spinning one hundred eighty degrees and at last lurching to a stop in the middle of the road.

“Plenty,” Caleb answers, and he’s already levering his door open, eyes on the approaching undead as he takes aim.

Their car’s sudden movement has drawn some of the attention away from Charles and Abigail, and the sound of gunfire a moment later attracts more of them. Caleb expels his two shells, the powerful blasts felling the few closest zombies, and when he ducks behind his open door to reload, John empties his magazine into the crowd, dispatching several more with quick, efficient headshots. With Caleb’s next turn, they’ve pulled enough of them away from the other car for Charles to drive forward through the herd, getting his tyres on solid ground once more. John reloads and gets off a few more shots, but the undead are too close, advancing more quickly than he can take them all down. He hears Caleb get off two more shots and then leap back into the car, pulling his door closed against the grasping hands. “Not doing so well here, Doc!” he calls.

John kills a few more and then he too scrambles back inside, shutting his door just as the herd swells forward, breaking around the car like an ocean wave and rocking it on its wheels. The undead paw at the window, leaving trails of blood and muck in their wake, but the glass holds. He hears an engine rev, looks up to see Charles and Abigail have got clear of the herd and are now swinging back around. They sit motionless for one moment, and then their car lurches forward, barrelling toward John and Caleb with a sudden burst of speed. A second later, the passenger side window rolls open, and Abigail leans out, high-power rifle braced against her shoulder, taking aim.

“Get down!” John barks, throwing himself sideways across the centre console, below the line of the dashboard. Caleb drops into the floor space in front of the passenger seat, gangly limbs compressing impossibly as bullets fly around them. John feels a shower of tiny glass fragments across his back and neck, scorching metal passing far too close through the air above him before leaving a spiderweb crater in the rear window. Outside the car, the walking dead are falling one by one, some to Abigail’s shots and others to the front end of Charles’ car as they forget John and Caleb in favour of the newer, louder, moving target. 

John lets himself exhale as the corpses nearest his window begin to disperse – until the sound of glass cracking reaches his ears. His gaze snaps to the back window: weakened by the stray bullet, the glass is beginning to collapse inward with the press of bodies gathered at the boot. Long, vine-like cracks are sprouting outward from the central bullet hole, the glass slowly fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces, failing fast.

Caleb is staring up at the window, wide-eyed, from his position wedged under the dash. “Uh, Doc…”

“Yeah.” John’s fingers tighten around his handgun, but when he moves to pull it up to aim, it doesn’t budge, the muzzle jammed between the seat and centre console in his hasty dive for cover. “Fuck—”

The glass splinters a little more. Bloody hands and faces press against the opposite side, unseeing eyes hungry.

“I can’t get a shot from here!” Caleb says, trying to manoeuvre his shotgun up and around the seat.

“I know—” He yanks on the Browning again, manages to wiggle it a millimetre, not far enough. His weight on the seat and awkward position sprawled sideways prevent any further progress.

...And even if he does get his weapon free, what then?

John feels time seem to slow around him, feels as though he can suddenly see everything, appreciate everything, every detail of the inevitable outcome laid out before him.

He’ll fire a shot at the back window. The glass will shatter. The zombies will come. Maybe he’ll be able to kill a few of them first, but not enough. Not fast enough. And so what? It’ll be a relief. Maybe he’ll even get a chance to put his gun in his mouth before they reach him. Better to die in a quick flash than eaten alive and eventually turned.

He watches the frenzied faces on the other side of the glass, the smears of blood and rot they leave behind, feels like he can sit and take it all in, because this is it, this is the end of John Watson, and he can’t help the breath that sighs out of him, the pure and utter relief at finally _seeing_ everything, finally _understanding_.

Maybe this is what the world looks like through Sherlock’s eyes.

And suddenly, the undead fade from view, the car and Caleb and Abigail and Charles all disappear around him, because all John can see in his mind’s eye is Sherlock’s face – slack with sleep, contorted in pain, shining in triumph, crinkling around a rare genuine smile, sizing John up and leaving him bare, altered, changed forever – and all he can think is, _It’s not enough._

_I need to see him again._

The back window caves in with a final shudder, and the front few zombies begin to pull themselves forward across its jagged edges, struggling against each other in the small space.

“Damn it!” John snarls, and wraps both hands around the Browning, sitting up and pulling hard. The gun comes free just as Caleb leans into the newly vacated centre space and unloads both barrels into the back seat, blowing away the zombies reaching for them.

The shock of the blast in such close quarters makes John’s vision bleed white for a moment, makes him feel as though he’s drifting slowly sideways, a high-pitched ringing in his ears blocking out all other sound. He blinks foggily several times, shaking his head, fingers clenching around the Browning’s grip. His vision swims back into focus after what can’t have been more than a second or two, and despite the fog and the ringing he’s able to lift the handgun and fire three more shots, sounding like dull, far off firecrackers,  killing the next wave of undead that try to crawl in through the broken rear window. Caleb is slumped in the passenger seat, rubbing at his head and ears with one hand while the other searches blindly for more ammunition. John thinks vaguely that it’s really rather unfortunate for someone so young to already have hearing damage.

Sounds slowly start to come back to him, but they’re watery and indistinct, and still overlaid with that damn ringing. He kills two more undead, waits for more to come for them, but all seems quiet now.

A fist pounding on the driver’s window makes them both jump.

It’s Abigail. “You two all right?” she calls through the glass, and John fumbles for the handle, swings the door open.

“We’re— We’re fine,” John says, glancing back at Caleb, who nods, though his face is still ashen. John pulls himself out of the car, mindful of the bloody handprints left by the attacking herd. Abigail steps back to give him room, slings her rifle on her shoulder. “Is that all of them?” he asks, looking around. She nods.

Bodies litter the ground, unmoving, lying in their own pooling filth. John spots the other car parked across the road, and Charles stands a little ways away, pistol held low, scanning the dead for movement. “You two thinned them out quite a bit,” Abigail tells him. “Didn’t take much for us to finish the rest of them off, once we got moving again.” She glances toward the rear of the car, frowning. “You gave me a scare for a minute, though.”

John nods wearily, turning to look over the remains of the vehicle as Caleb climbs unsteadily to his feet on the far side. The windshield has a bullet hole straight through it, along with some additional damage from the backlash of the shotgun’s blast. He looks at the back seat next, at their supplies stacked there and the decomposing bodies now sprawled atop it all. There’s blood everywhere. John sighs. “I suppose this is a lost cause,” he says. They won’t even be able to salvage the car; the likelihood of contamination is just too high.

Caleb toddles over, holding his weapon in one hand and his head in the other. “Can we go home now?”

They take what they can from the wrecked vehicle, ammunition and maps, anything that can identify them or lead others back to the castle. The supplies in the back seat are ruined, but they’re able to clear the bodies off the boot and crack it open; the boxes and cans within seemed to have been spared from the carnage. They wash with bleach and water from their canteens, and then turn to loading up the remaining car. The next problem, of course, is space. With all four of them in one vehicle, there’s less room for their spoils. They pack things into the boot as tight as they’ll go and all sit with items around their feet and on their laps, anywhere they can squeeze anything in, except for Charles, who’s driving. John wishes they could siphon the remaining petrol from the other car, but they have neither the room to transport it nor the time. Already, it will be nearly dark by the time they get back.

With one last heavy sigh, John turns away to climb into the waiting car with his three companions. It’s a significant loss, having to abandon a car out here, and they’ll need to find a replacement before too long. Having enough seats to transport them all in the case of an emergency is one safety measure John isn’t about to let go of easily. He takes his share of cartons to hold on his lap, relieving Caleb of some of the weight, and settles in for the drive back.

In the quiet rumble of the car’s engine, John finds his thoughts drifting both ahead of them to the castle and behind them to the wreckage, reliving that chilling moment sprawled across the front seat with the undead bearing down on him. He shivers, left hand clenching around the boxes in his lap, fighting against the returning tremors. Giving up isn’t the answer, and apparently neither is recklessly risking his life, blindly searching for anything that will give him that adrenaline rush, not anymore, not now that his brain seems to have recognised the return of his _true_ addiction.

He closes his eyes and all he can see is Sherlock’s face, all he can think of is the unquestionable, _unfathomable_ need to see him again, as soon as humanly possible.

 


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“This is not insignificant!” Harry snarls, slamming her hand on the table._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oi, god, sorry for the late chapter, guys. I am just one big clusterfuck over here -_- Sorryyyyy~

He sleeps until noon, at which time Harry comes to wake him. For several seconds, Sherlock can do naught but blink sleepily up at her, standing empty-handed as she is in the doorway, grinning down at him.

“Well?” she says. “Come on, get up!”

“What,” he grumbles, but she’s already shoving at his shoulder, pushing him upright. “I refuse to bathe in that freezing water again.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Harry tells him jovially. “It’s lunchtime, and you’re going to come have lunch with us.”

“Oh god.”

She pulls him to his feet, slings his good arm over her shoulders while she grasps his waist. “Shut up. You’re the one who wanted out of this room. And it’s about time you met some of the others.”

Despite the fact this is exactly what he requires for the next stage of his plans (though he’d intended it to involve more scientific observation and note-taking, and less small-talk), Sherlock can’t summon much enthusiasm at the prospect of  _meeting people_. Especially when one of those people is—

“Ugh. Well I just lost my appetite.”

—Anderson.

“It’s a wonder you’ve not lost more than that,” Sherlock drawls, refusing to be suddenly more conscious of just how much he is currently reliant on Harry as they struggle toward the dining tables. “Clothes, shoes, weapon, ammunition... It’s rather a lot for two little brain cells to keep track of.”

Anderson’s expression sours further (not yet reached maximum rancidity, will wonders never cease), his mouth pinching up, eyes narrowing, skin bleeding white. (Varied reactions from the others seated around him: red-haired woman, glasses, concerned, mildly offended, dislikes conflict but unlikely to speak up in favour of either side; preadolescent boy, dark hair, chortles loudly, hoping to convince others he understands the joke; blonde woman, the boy’s mother, lip curled, nose wrinkled, offended, disgusted, less by the remark than by Sherlock’s presence, trying to shield her son with an arm about his shoulders; Kal, smirking openly, dislikes Anderson, possibly due to (botched) attempts by the latter at romantic overtures towards the former’s sister; Sasha, peeking over the table from beside her uncle, no signs of recognition for any of the words passing over her head.)

“Put a sock in it, you two,” Harry interrupts, kicking an empty chair away from the table and shoving Sherlock’s weight down into it. He lands with a huff, catches himself, glares up at her. “God, John used to complain about the two of you fighting like schoolgirls, but I never thought I’d see it...”

“Schoolgirls?!” Anderson sputters, eyes bugging out and face somehow, miraculously, becoming only more reminiscent of a withered lemon.

“Such a comparison is rather insulting to studious young women,” Sherlock agrees drily.

“I was including _you_ in that, dick,” Harry retorts, flicking Sherlock’s ear as she returns with two full plates, one of which she places in front of him before settling herself in the next seat over. “Don’t hurt yourself trying to think up a response, Damien,” she calls, not looking at Anderson as he fumes at the far end of the table.

Damien, the one spreading stories about Sherlock. Of _course_ it’s Anderson. Bloody blood loss making him think so bloody slowly.

Anderson ( _Damien_ , god, even his first name is annoying!) throws a rude gesture at Harry as he pushes away from the table (which she ignores, grinning into her sandwich). “Least I’m not throwing my lot in with a psychopathic _freak_ ,” he spits, and gives the others seated around the table a meaningful look before storming outside.

“My thoughts exactly,” the blonde woman sniffs, rising from her own chair with her nose in the air. She pulls her son along with her, ignoring his whinged protests as they disappear out into the courtyard. (Housewife, (previously) wealthy, accustomed to luxury, distaste for firearms or any sort of physical labour; chances of survival to this point not in her favour.)

“That was— rude,” the red-haired woman says after a moment, slants a nervous glance at Sherlock, drops her gaze again.

Kal shrugs. “Good riddance. Prissy bi—” The ginger woman clears her throat, frowning at him, and he seems to suddenly remember his young niece sitting beside him. “—iiieeeeen. Bean. Bean pole.”

The little girl blinks up at him, utterly mystified.

“I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced,” the woman tries again, addressing Sherlock. He gives up glaring at his food to level his gaze at her instead. (Hints of an Edinburgh accent, suppressed, more recent evidence of Oxford in her speech; heavy academic background, something intellectual and theoretical, but not medical or scientific; doesn’t smoke, rarely drinks; habitually wears glasses despite only requiring them for reading; frequently hunches her shoulders to appear smaller; uncomfortable under scrutiny.) She smiles slightly; her hands are folded tightly together on the edge of the table, knuckles showing white. “Mary Morstan, Professor of Ancient Greek Mythology. Er— _former_ professor, I suppose,” she adds, and hastily tucks a lock of hair behind her ear (nervous gesture).

“Sherlock Holmes,” he replies, then sneers, “Invalid.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a drama queen,” Harry rolls her eyes, pausing the woodchipper-like annihilation of her sandwich to add her voice to the conversation.  “He’s a detective, helps out Scotland Yard in his free time, that sort of thing.”

Kal snaps his fingers. “I knew I’d heard your name before,” he says, gesturing triumphantly. “You were in all the papers a year or two back, weren’t you?” His eyes narrow slightly, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he pushes away his empty plate to fold his arms on the table. “Didn’t you jump off a building or something?”

Sherlock studies the other man for half a second before responding, trying to overwrite the dazed, deliquescent impressions left on his mind from the night of the cauterisation with solid, factual observations now (lived and worked in London, construction and other varied labour jobs; little social interaction with his sister and niece before the plague; regular, though not heavy, drinker; not a daily newspaper reader (uninterested in politics or economics beyond direct impact on his own life), but a tendency to browse headlines whilst queuing for the chip-and-pin machine). “Yes,” he replies simply.

“Really?!” Sasha pipes up beside her uncle, sitting on her knees in the chair to lean over the tabletop, her eyes shining with wonder and delight. “Was it fun?”

Sherlock blinks at her ( _climbing higher and higher in the branches, ignoring Mummy’s and Mycroft’s calls for him to come back to the house, leaping into the open air, just to see if he could stick the landing, to see if he could learn to fly_ ), while Harry stills beside him and, across the table, Kal starts to admonish the child for her question, “It’s not skydiving, Sash!”

“Not particularly, no,” Sherlock answers, ignoring both of the adults.

The little girl seems to consider his words, looking both surprised and chagrined at this new information. Then, her eyes widening with realization, she asks, “Did it hurt?”

( _Three fractured ribs, dislocated shoulder, subluxed knee, sprained ankle, mild concussion, hearing and vision temporarily compromised, myriad scrapes and contusions—_ )

“Yes,” Sherlock says.

“Then why’d you do it?” Sasha asks, voice soft and dark eyes wide.

“Yeah, Sherly, do tell,” Harry says at his silence, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms, her tone snide, tension poorly concealed beneath.

“Uh— Perhaps this isn’t an appropriate discussion for Sasha?” Professor Morstan suggests hesitantly.

Kal turns to look appraisingly down at his niece. “You wanna go play outside?” 

“No.”

He shrugs, looks back at the rest of them. “Not like she’s unfamiliar with the concept of death by now,” he mutters, then gestures toward Sherlock in a manner that seems to indicate _get on with it, then._

Sherlock looks around at the others watching him, waiting for him to continue. At face value, he is the focus of attention in this conversation, and there is a part of him that balks at their interrogation – but the various reactions to his words displayed by the members of his audience are more informative than they can possibly know, and more easily given while they each feel secure in the delusion that Sherlock is the one divulging personal information, rather than themselves. Though they don’t know it, their stories are written in their faces and every twitch of their body language, plain and open for Sherlock to read.

“There were threats issued against several people close to me,” he says, deciding that a brief summation of the basic facts will do in this situation. “I was informed that if I did not perpetrate my own suicide, they would be killed. I devised a method by which to make it appear as though I had complied with that demand, and then used the cover of my supposed to death to hunt down and destroy the organisation that had issued it.”

Professor Morstan covers her small gasp with one hand. “And Doctor Watson – John – was one of the people being threatened?”

Sherlock glances at her (reasonably intelligent, intuitive, timid but eager to please, eager to befriend – eager to befriend _John_ perhaps above all). “Yes.”

“Christ, it’s like something out of a spy movie,” Kal says with a grin and a shake of his head – at the same time that Harry’s foot slips from the lower rung of her chair to the floor with a loud slap of boot-on-stone. When Sherlock looks over at her, she is staring at him, gaping, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

Sherlock is just about to comment on her excellent impersonation of a trout when she demands, “Does John know about any of that?”

He sneers, lip curling at the idiotic question. “Obviously he wasn’t aware of it at the time, and it’s not as though I was sending him messages from beyond the—”

“You said it was for ‘the greater good,’ not that it was to save John’s life!”

Setting aside the fact that _he_ never once uttered that insipid phrase, Sherlock frowns down at her and says, “Detective Inspector Lestrade and Mrs Hudson were also at risk.”

“I don’t know who they are,” Harry retorts, “and neither of them are here, are they, so I don’t really see what that has to do with the price of eggs!”

“You were the one picking at insignificant details,” Sherlock bites back, his head beginning to swim with the heady sensation of adrenaline flooding his weakened system as an angry flush climbs his neck.

“This is _not_ insignificant!” Harry snarls, slamming her hand on the table.

“Um,” Kal breaks in, smiling somewhat awkwardly, “do you two want a moment alone?”

Sherlock looks around at the other three people at the table, scowling. He’s been completely sidetracked by Harry’s idiotic tangent, forgotten to observe the others’ reactions during his explanation. He looks down the length of the table at Mary (eyes wide behind her glasses, brows furrowed, wringing her hands in a blatant show of concern and discomfort at the conflict unfolding before her), then across at Kal (able bodied, experienced craftsman, reasonably intelligent and expectedly capable of following simple instructions). “Actually,” he says, and pushes away from the table, starts to stand, knows Harry will follow suit after just a moment of petulant reticence, “I think it’s time I retired to my room once more.”

“Well, good talking with you,” Kal says, cavalier, already turning his attention back to Sasha, while Mary murmurs, “It was nice to meet you.”

“God, you’re such a prick,” Harry grumbles, ducking under his good arm to help steady him.

Sherlock ignores her, ignores all of them, concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other and on keeping the satisfaction off of his face.

He’s found exactly what he needs.

 


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Whatever Sherlock’s reasons for returning – whatever his reasons for leaving in the first place, for faking his death and so effectively severing the ties between he and John – and whatever Sherlock can offer him now, whatever small, useful role in his life that John can play, it will be enough. It’ll have to be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's commented, left kudos, and especially read this far! You guys always brighten my day, you really do :)

The sun is setting behind them when they at last pull into the castle courtyard, the sky cast in deep reds and oranges and their shadows stretching long across the ground as they unload. The new supplies are quickly stowed away in the cellar larder with so many helping hands, and the story of their brush with death – and the subsequent loss of the other car – is recounted enthusiastically by Caleb as they work. John doesn’t comment, offering little more than shrugs and grunts whenever his opinion is requested, and tries to keep his head down, concentrating on the work and counting the minutes until he can escape.

The moment the lid of the boot is snapped down into place, John turns and climbs the stairs into the front room once more, and makes a beeline for the sleeping quarters, face set determinedly.

“John, wait,” Harry says, intercepting him halfway across the main hall. She catches his arm and he lets her pull him to a stop, turning reluctantly to face her. Her gaze flicks over his face, crusted with dust and grime, smelling heavily of gunpowder, expression stony. “Are you all right?” she asks after a moment, leaning in close and keeping her voice low.

John feels a harsh laugh bubble up and out of him at the question, finds himself avoiding her eyes. “No. Of course I’m not all right. But what else is new?”

Harry’s eyes widen, her fingers tightening on his arm. “John,” she says, “Johnny. What Caleb was talking about— Were you…?”

He shrugs her hand off, backing away a step, doesn’t meet her gaze. “I’m still here,” he mutters.

“Despite your best efforts,” Harry sighs, but there’s no bite to her words this time. She folds her arms over her chest, edging forward again but not reaching for him.

John looks at her, eyes tracing over his sister’s familiar face, taking in the weathered skin, crow’s feet sprouting around her blue eyes, pale grey beginning to streak through sandy blonde. They make quite a pair, the two of them, the last remaining Watsons, mirror images of each other, both tired and broken and somehow still struggling along. Harry’s done much of the damage to herself, he knows, through years of addiction and drowning her sorrows along the road of least resistance.

Not that John’s any better: he can feel the call in his blood, the need coursing through him, pulling him toward the first bedroom on the right and what sits behind its closed door, every cell in his body yearning for refreshment, for the next dose. It feels like an echo of his struggle with painkillers, years ago, after he’d been shot. It would have been so easy then to let the pills dull everything around him, to make the pain and the sudden emptiness of his life bearable and allow himself to simply drift away in a fog of comfortable apathy. But he’d seen how his sister lived, seen his parents and other relatives, every one of them dragged under by the sickly sweet chemical decline, and he’d fought against it, refused to wind up like them. John had done everything in his power to escape that fate, had strictly limited his drug and alcohol intake, had never allowed himself to fall back on his own comforting medical degree as an excuse to self-medicate. He’d forced himself to keep active, to walk everyday – the direct result of which, of course, had been his introduction to a far stealthier addiction.

Eighteen months later, he’d found himself alone again, forced into cold turkey deprivation that left him dreaming of stained pavement by night and continuously making two cups of tea by day, until he finally went through his cupboards and systematically smashed every mug in the flat but the one he himself drank from. His therapist had suggested medication, sleeping pills and antidepressants, but the mere thought had made John sick. If he really wanted to escape what his life had become, he knew there was a much faster, much more permanent way waiting for him at home in the top drawer of his desk.

“How do you do it, Harry?” John asks at last, his words quiet, strained.

Harry’s brows pull together, her mouth tugging down into a frown, not even trying to hide her concern. “Do what now?”

“Do… _this_ ,” John gestures around them, taking in the entirety of the castle with one sweep of his hand, “every day. How do you manage it? When it would be… so _easy_ to just—” He’s not even sure which he’s asking about: how easy it would be to fall back on old habits, or how easy it would be to simply end it all, to never have to wake up to this struggle ever again.

Harry stops him with a hand on his arm. Her eyes are soft when John meets her gaze once more. Soft, and very sad. “One day at a time, Johnny,” she tells him, looking up at him, somehow answering both questions. “Just one day at a time.”

John exhales, feels his back and shoulders tensing up, defences rising once more. “Right,” he says, nodding. He glances to the side, toward his original objective. “I guess I should get this over with.”

Harry follows his gaze to the residential hall. “I was just about to bring him some dinner,” she murmurs, and glances at John again. “Are you… I mean, you’re clearly upset, and you’ve had a long day…”

“I can’t put this off anymore, Har,” he says, shaking his head and looking down at the floor. It’s a surrender, in some respects, he supposes, though he’d much rather think of it as a compromise. He can’t very well expect that they’ll be able to keep avoiding each other once Sherlock’s on his feet again, not in a community and a building this small, but he also knows that he absolutely cannot allow himself to return to the old way of thinking, when Sherlock had come to represent everything that John’s life revolved around, everything that was important and worth protecting in the world. Everything that he needed to continue functioning.

Whatever Sherlock’s reasons for returning – whatever his reasons for leaving in the first place, for faking his death and so effectively severing the ties between he and John – and whatever Sherlock can offer him now, whatever small, useful role in his life that John can play, it will be enough. It’ll have to be.

“I needed to compartmentalise,” he tries to explain, his voice halting, choked, only too aware that Harry’s still watching him, still frowning with worry. “I think I’ve got a handle on it now.” He’s got it shut up tight, hatches battened down and doorways barred, determined to keep any of his own messy, _sentimental_ reactions from leaching out and muddying the waters between them.

“I know it’s not my place, but—” Harry cuts off, biting her lip. “I mean, you two should talk. You _need_ to talk. But I just want to be sure this is the right thing to do, right now, for both of you,” she says, and John feels a momentary, irrational flash of anger at her words, at _her_.

Harry has never expressed any amount of concern for Sherlock before, had barely tolerated his presence on the few occasions when they’d met in the past, barely a minute passing before they each inevitably fell to drunken yelling and barbed insults and John had to separate them like a pair of unruly primary school children. He and Harry had never been close growing up, but in the past months since the outbreak, since Harry had stopped drinking and they’d had no one but each other to rely on, John had come to take their solidarity for granted, had instinctually begun to turn to his sister for support. It had felt like those distantly-remembered days when they were in secondary school, far from being friends and yet unquestioningly defending each other against the bullies who took issue with his sister’s openly declared sexual orientation.

It’s more than a little surprising to find just how much this feels like a betrayal.

“It is,” John says, and shrugs her hand away, wondering acerbically what Sherlock had done to con his way into her good graces. Smiled and simpered and played at humanity like he’d done to so many crime scene witnesses, to all the unsuspecting people in his life. John shakes his head, and knows he can’t really blame Harry for falling for the act. “I need to sort this out, one way or another.”

Harry frowns again and chews her lip some more, but doesn’t try to stop him. “Okay,” she says, and John nods once and turns to continue on to the sleeping quarters.

 


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Once his plans are completed, once Sherlock has **fixed** this, then John will finally speak to him again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many, many thanks to my beta GlassCannon and especially Madame_Mary for her super fast Britpicking :)

The afternoon passes quickly once Sherlock is settled in his room again, pen and paper in hand, mind abuzz. Harry seems to have come back at some point after dropping him in bed, setting his abandoned lunch on the bedside table with a glare. He vaguely remembers her making some statement to the effect that he needs to eat, and that he needs to tell John what they talked about earlier, vaguely remembers humming his acknowledgement as he’d resumed ignoring her.

The schematics are simple enough, perfectly clear in his head, though transferring them to paper proves slightly more difficult as he’s forced to hold the pen in his non-dominant hand. He sketches his plans out slowly, painstakingly, simplifying the blueprints as much as possible, spelling out in careful detail the list of supplies required for the build. 

The chimney will come first. The necessary components for that project will be the easiest to acquire, and while Sherlock will obviously himself oversee the work, his own manual labour will not be specifically required – he will, hopefully, be able to rely on Kal’s expertise and ability to follow instructions.

The turbine, though, will need to wait for the time being, at least until Sherlock regains some use of his right hand. He flexes the fingers of the as yet dysfunctional appendage, twisting his wrist restlessly in the sling, locking his jaw against the stabs of pain that course outward from his shoulder at the pull of muscles. This particular project could feasibly have the greatest impact in terms of Sherlock’s larger objective, but leaving it to amateurs would undoubtedly end in disaster. No, he'll need his own hands and eyes on the fine points of this one.

The last, most nebulous stage of the plan does not get committed to paper, as doing so would serve little purpose and could, ultimately, invalidate any conclusions he hopes to reach by its enactment. While this is most decidedly  _not_  his area, Sherlock feels he holds an adequate knowledge of and familiarity with John’s tastes and preferences in order to accomplish the goal. Indeed, his own involvement in this particular venture will (hopefully) be minimal; he need only introduce an appropriate catalyst and then step back to watch the (he can't help but sneer at the unscientific use of the term)  _chemistry_  run its course.

And then, once his plans are completed, once Sherlock has  _fixed_  this, then John will finally speak to him again.

The hours roll by; evening approaches, and Sherlock’s notebook is nearly half full when the bedroom door opens once more. He glances up, a ready comment concerning the futility of Harry’s continuing efforts to bring him food on the tip of his tongue – but the words die in his throat as he feels his entire body freeze, the banal adage about a doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming lorry flitting through his head.

John stands framed in the open doorway, back straight, head held high, one hand resting on the door handle while the other hangs, clenched into a fist, at his side. His expression is carefully schooled: calm, resolute, the stiff upper lip of a soldier going into battle. A layer of sweat and dust encrusts his clothing and exposed skin, the faintest of tan lines detectible about the edges of his sleeves and collar. The sharp odour of spent gun powder hangs around him like a cloud. 

Sherlock curls his fingers around the notebook balanced on his knees; his timeline does not account for the possibility of an early visit from John. His plans are uncompleted, hardly even begun,  _nothing_  has  _changed_  – so why,  _how_ , is John here now?

But, of course: John doesn’t operate according to Sherlock’s expectations. He never has, likely (hopefully) never will. It shouldn’t surprise him anymore, these surprising things that John does. Shouldn’t, but does. Always will.

He left the castle for supplies, as Harry had so kindly informed him that morning; gone for nearly the entire day; encountered not a small number of undead; tired, stressed, mood edging into waspish; more likely than usual to simply throw up his hands and retreat to his own room upstairs if Sherlock is being difficult, as he’d witnessed on more than a few occasions in 221B after John had had a bad day at the surgery. 

With some effort, Sherlock manages to keep his eyes from darting ((only slightly) guiltily) to the plate of hours-old food still sitting on the bedside table, the mug of untouched tea alongside it. His lack of appetite had at times in the past been interpreted as a kind of personal affront to John’s medical sensibilities, especially when John was in a mood like this – but perhaps if Sherlock doesn’t point it out, John won’t notice, won’t go storming off before Sherlock is allowed a chance to even attempt to set things right. 

John stares at him for a long moment, breathing deeply, gaze hard, and then he steps inside and quietly, firmly, closes the door. When he turns back around to face Sherlock, his mouth is compressed into a hard, flat line. “All right,” John says, folding his arms over his chest. He lifts his gaze to look across at Sherlock again. “All right. Let’s talk.”

 


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I was so alone, and I owe you so much._

John doesn’t let himself pause as he nears Sherlock’s room, wills himself to reach for the door and swing it open in one move, like running into battle or staunching a flowing wound, no hesitation, no time to think about what he’s about to do, just doing it. 

When Sherlock’s eyes snap up to meet his, though, John feels himself rooted to the spot, the sight hitting him like a physical force: unable to blink, breathe, overcome suddenly by the wash of memories, the ghosts that had dogged his every step for months, that had finally driven him out of Baker Street and nearly driven him out of his mind. There is a part of him that still does not believe that this is reality, that Sherlock could be sitting here in front of him, mercury eyes alert and sharp against his moon pale skin and night dark hair, alive and healing and  _here_. John can admit, at least to himself, that he still half expects to wake at any moment, expects to find himself back in London, back in the real world, free of the undead plague but returned to a far more terrible nightmare, one where he still uses a cane to walk, where he visits a silent, lonely headstone every week, where his best friend is still dead.

John steels himself against the rising tide of emotion, the joy and awe creeping up his throat and behind his eyes, forces his body to react, to obey, manages to step over the threshold and close the door behind him. Sherlock’s solidity, his real, impossible, reassuring presence is almost enough to make John cast aside all his reasoning and doubts, all his determination to stand on his own, to break free of the maddening hold that this man has on him. He feels himself wavering, feels the lingering desire to simply throw caution to the wind, to throw himself at Sherlock’s feet, beg him to never leave again, never leave John, never make him go through that again— 

 _No,_ John thinks. No, he needs to do this. He needs to set boundaries, needs to get past this, to move out from Sherlock’s shadow on his own terms.  _That_  is how he’ll ensure that this never happens again, that he’s never again left alone, grieving and abandoned and confused.

Gritting his teeth, John takes a deep breath and finally turns to face his old friend.

Sherlock is sitting up in the bed, blankets gathered around him like a nest, clad in a jacket and tracksuit bottoms that are far too big for him, the fabric hanging voluminous and loose from his scrawny frame. The effect, coupled with his wide, curious eyes as he silently watches John, is to make him seem childlike, fragile, small. He looks healthier, at least, stronger, less evidence of pain and alcohol clouding his gaze, his expression caught somewhere between startled and intrigued, surprised, and even, just slightly, hopeful.

“All right,” John sighs, and leans back against the door, folding his arms over his chest. When he looks up again, Sherlock is still staring at him, though his expression has shifted minutely towards the defensive. John is struck suddenly with the image of a pet that’s been disciplined and isn’t sure its master still cares for it anymore. He swallows, pushes that thought away. “All right. Let’s talk.”

Sherlock’s brows rise, one and then the other, a question and its deduced answer flitting across his face faster than John can follow. “You spoke with Harry,” he says, nodding and looking away as his long fingers tighten around the notebook balanced on his drawn up knees, as though considering stowing it out of view. John can see Sherlock’s chicken scratch surrounding diagrams and charts that adorn the pages, awkward and slanted from trying to write with his left hand.

“Yes,” John responds, the word coming out clipped, precise, his thoughts turning unwillingly back to his conversation with his sister just a few moments ago. He frowns at Sherlock’s profile, at his long, spindly fingers against the stark white paper, wonders what he could have to hide amongst all his scribblings – but now is not the time. John needs to get this over with, to speak his piece and expel these festering words from inside himself, clear them out so that maybe, finally, he can begin to think about healing, so that he might, at long last, attempt to move on, to put behind him all those months spent visiting Sherlock’s –  _empty_  – grave, the endless nights dreaming not of sand and war but of grey skies and the wind whistling past his ears, pavement rising up to meet him, promises and pleas that had fallen like rain from his lips, hundreds, thousands –  _all lies!_

Sherlock glances up at him, a quick flash of silver and then away again. “I see,” he sniffs, as though he can read all the conflict, all the pain and anguish written across John’s life in the last years, as if he can analyse and sort through it and set it all aside in a single moment. He looks away, abandoning the notebook to twirl the biro pen through the fingers of his left hand. “As expected, it made little difference.”

Oh, of course: he’d wanted Harry to put in a good word for him, to soften John up, make him more agreeable. John’s vague, even spiteful, suspicion while talking to his sister out in the hallway had been right on the money after all. He can’t help wondering what kind of sorry tale Sherlock had spun for her, what sorts of emotions he’d faked to win her over. Maybe they’d bonded over both being recovering addicts.

 _I mourned you_ , John thinks savagely. He says, “I don’t owe you anything.” Because he needs to make that abundantly clear. 

Sherlock actually rolls his eyes. “ _Obviously_.” Then, slanting a look up at John through his fringe, he adds, “You’re angry.” 

“Yes,  _amazing_ , how did you  _ever_  manage to deduce  _that_?” John snaps back. He can feel his pulse beginning to kick up, a dull thumping in his ears to offset the sound of waves beating against stone, raging, washing over him. He sucks in a breath, tells himself to calm down, to not let Sherlock get under his skin. It’s what he does, even if he doesn’t realise it, even if he doesn’t intend to. He just can’t help being an insufferable dick.

Sherlock glowers at John’s sarcasm, his hand returning to clamp tight on his notebook, and this time he does put it away, twisting his body to shove it under the blankets on the far side of the bed, nearest the wall. He seems to be taking his time, fussing with the duvet, avoiding John’s eyes. “Perhaps if I were to explain—”

“ _No_ ,” John interrupts, his mouth moving without his permission, a visceral, knee-jerk reaction. No, he doesn’t want to listen to Sherlock’s reasons, his excuses. _No_ , he’s not going to be taken in by the slick, lightning-fast logic, running circles around John’s smaller intellect, spinning him around until he doesn’t know which way is up, until he’ll agree to anything, agree to follow Sherlock anywhere, forever, to expect nothing in return. He can feel his shoulders hunching, his body quivering with the divergent urges to both curl defensively into itself and stalk around the room, take the offensive, loom over Sherlock to make his point. “No, I think _I’m_  the one who needs to explain, and  _you_  need to _listen_. Do you think you can do that?”

“John—”

“I don’t owe you  _anything_ ,” John says again, only distantly surprised at the vehemence that accompanies the words. The rushing in his ears has risen to a steady roar. “After everything that’s happened, after what you put me through— Why would you— What the  _hell_  did you even think you’d find here?”

Sherlock won’t even look at him. He’s sulking, like a child caught nicking sweets, not the least bit repentant, only cross at being scolded. “I thought I’d find  _you_ ,” he mutters.

“Well, congratulations: here I am!” John says, unfolding his arms and spreading them wide, as though presenting himself to the room. Storm winds buffet him, waves crashing around him.

Sherlock flushes, a spot of rosy colour rising high in each cheek as he glances briefly up at John before turning his face away again, scowling at nothing. “I didn’t—”

“I’m not putting up with any of your bollocks this time, that’s for sure,” John says, talking right over him. “No experiments, no deducing people’s secrets out loud for everyone to hear, no more _manipulating_ people to get what you want. And I don’t  _care_  how bored you get. I won’t stand for it. Do you understand me?”

“Obviously I understand,” Sherlock growls, at last turning to glare defiantly up at John.

“Well, good,” John says, folding his arms once more. “Figured I ought to make sure, I mean, _common decency_ has got to be one of those irrelevant little things that you’re completely ignorant of.”

Something passes over Sherlock’s face, a brief flicker – not quite shock, not quite pain, not quite a flinch – before his expression settles once more into a mask of vaguely indignant neutrality. “Anything else I should know?” he asks, voice low, eyes combing over John’s frame, picking him apart piece by piece before returning to his face.

There’s a tiny voice, way in the very back of John’s mind, that suggests he might have gone a little too far with that last comment, that he may have just given up the moral high ground. John shrugs it away, pushes on. “Yeah, one more thing: don’t try and rope Harry into doing your dirty work,” he says. “If you’ve got something to say to me, you say it to my face, _yourself_.”

Sherlock grimaces. “ _She_ was the one who—”

“ _She_ didn’t know any better!”John cuts him off. Harry always has been nosy, and pushy, doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. She’s the perfect target for Sherlock’s manipulations. “She doesn’t know you like I do.”

The detective scoffs at that, glaring at the wall off to John’s left. “ _I_ knew it was entirely irrelevant, obviously,” he hisses, his words coming quick and dark, almost speaking to himself. “Clearly it wouldn’t make any difference, but she _insisted_ that knowing every detail of what happened that day would alter the situation in some measure.”

“Right, because rehashing the worst day of my life is exactly what I need right now,” John mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and realises a moment too late that he’s spoken aloud. He squeezes his eyes shut, brows knitting together in frustration, and thinks, for one blessed second, that Sherlock’s not going to comment, that for once he won’t indulge his constant need to have the last word – but, nope, no such luck:

John hears the other man draw a breath, braces himself for whatever cold, cuttingly analytical observation is about to follow – and is more than a little surprised when he hears that deep voice instead say, very quietly, “You weren’t supposed to be there.”

Sherlock isn’t looking at him when John opens his eyes again, his pale gaze directed down at the faded pattern of the bedspread, contemplative, thoughtful. Wistful, even, if John didn’t know better.

“You didn’t want me there,” John echoes, watching Sherlock’s face, making sure he’s got the right of it, “when you jumped.” Sherlock doesn’t nod, doesn’t respond or acknowledge him in any way. John blows out a long breath, feels the storm still swirling about him, inside him. “Well, I suppose that would hurt if my best friend had _actually_ meant to kill himself.”

Sherlock shoots him a look, a _really, John, must you be so stupidly sentimental_ look, and then he seems to unfurl slightly, shedding a layer of the defensiveness he’d been holding about himself up ‘til now, settling easily into his explanation mode. The familiarity of the move, incongruous with their surroundings, is enough to make John’s head spin. “I’d intended the distress call regarding Mrs Hudson to take somewhat longer to sort out than it apparently did,” Sherlock tells him, his voice detached, distant. “As it was, you nearly arrived while we were still negotiating.” This last is said with an odd curl of his lip, a strange, almost sarcastic emphasis placed on the final word.

John is momentarily overcome with the memories of that day – worry for their dear old landlady, outrage at Sherlock’s apparent nonchalance, and then the realisation, the sick knowledge that _something_ was happening, something wasn’t right, though he’d no idea what yet – and then, the phone call. Then, the end. He can’t breathe past it, can’t escape the crushing weight of it all, the sight of his best, his only, friend, silhouetted against the sky, his name a choked whisper in John’s throat, and the _sound_ of it, the slap of flesh on pavement, bright, wet crimson against dark grey—

He’s shaking, trying to force air into his lungs, trying to shove the horrible images away from himself, to beat back the utter _lies_ that they represent, clawing for purchase, for a handhold, for anything to anchor himself as the waves smash into him and the gale screams, howling in his ears, an endless chorus of _liar liar **liar** —_

“You said ‘we,’” he gasps, eyes flying open and words tumbling out before he’s made a conscious decision to speak, latching onto anything that can drag him out of the hurricane. “You— Negotiating?” He’s staring at Sherlock and Sherlock is staring right back, staring at the wildness John feels in his own expression, his blood thrumming like a flood beneath his skin, feeding the storm, swirling and angry and only growing as the pieces begin to fall into place.

No.

“Moriarty,” John breathes, feels the ground shifting under his feet.

No, _don’t._

“Moriarty was there. On the roof. With you.”

Sherlock is still staring up at him, looking across at John like he’s just said the most obvious, moronic, trivial thing. Like he’s just discovered that the sky is blue or that Great Britain is an island nation. “Yes,” he says after a moment, rolling the word carefully in his mouth.

“He— And you sent me away. You _arranged_ for the call about Mrs Hudson, so that I would leave, and you could go meet him. On the roof.” The storm is shrieking in his ears now, a waterspout, a tornado ripping through him.

Don’t look at it too closely, don’t, _don’t_ —

“Yes,” Sherlock repeats, beginning to grow impatient.

“So you could—” _Negotiate_ , what the hell does that even mean? John doesn’t think he’s ever heard a stranger word in his life.

Don’t look at it, don’t even _think_ it—

“So you could finish playing out your sick little game with him?” John guesses, and he can’t look at Sherlock, he can’t, _can’t_ , can’t even see him through the rain and sleet and detritus the wind throws at him.

“It wasn’t—” he hears Sherlock start to say, and there’s an odd note of alarm in his voice, of distress, and it makes John laugh, low and harsh.

“It was always a game, wasn’t it?” he bites out, and finally opens his eyes, finally makes himself meet Sherlock’s gaze, the wide, pale eyes seeming alien in the sudden stillness of the bedroom, a stark contrast to the storm still raging behind John’s brow. God, Sherlock had _looked forward_ to their encounters, he’d _delighted_ in the macabre puzzles that madman had laid out for him. A rigged jury, poisoned children, a street full of assassins, he couldn’t get _enough_ of it, he’d go haring off at the slightest hint, the first _sign_ —

No, _stop this_ —

The words are still pouring out of him, unquenching, unstoppable, “It was a bloody game, a fucking _contest_ , what, to see who’s the bigger psychopath?!”

He shouldn’t have said that. He doesn’t think that, not really. He can’t find the will to feel sorry about it, not with the wind screaming in his ears, the waves beating at him, trying to drown him, Sherlock staring at him, quicksilver irises rendered still, immobile, frozen.

And then: “You’re angry that I’m alive,” the detective states. Cold. Factual. Unfeeling.

John looks at him, can’t remember how to breathe, how to think outside of this storm, because _yes_ , fuck yes, on some level, of _course_. “You _left_ ,” he spits. But don’t examine it too closely, don’t look, don’t or it’ll burn you right through—

“It was easier when you believed I was dead,” Sherlock asserts, and his voice seems to be melding with the banshee cries of the wind, deep thunder rolling beneath the higher cacophony.

“ _Easy?_ ” John sputters, has to shake his head clear of the water rising, frothing around him, steam bubbling off its surface, boiling, searing him. “You think it was _easy_ for me?!”

Sherlock’s voice is a distant crack, lightning and earthquakes. “You got to play the noble friend, the one true believer to the bitter end, and then you put it all behind you, packed up into a neat little box to be forgotten, so that you could go back to being normal, nice, _boring_ John Watson.”

Yes. Boring. That’s what he is. Boring, ordinary John Watson.

And Sherlock doesn’t need him. Never had, never will.

John spins on his heel, searching blindly for the door handle, for escape, for any sort of reprieve from this storm that he can’t tame, can’t fight, and it’s only Sherlock’s voice that gives him pause, calling his name through all the shrieking chaos in John’s head.

“ _John_ —”

There’s something there in Sherlock’s voice, something different, unusual: a strangled note of pleading, of unwilling but instantaneous regret – and, god help him, John can’t control the way he responds to it, the way he will always, always listen for Sherlock, listen for when he is needed. John closes his eyes, fingers clenching around the door handle, takes a deep breath. He doesn’t turn back, but he doesn’t leave either, not just yet.

After a moment of silence, Sherlock says, soft, “I can fix this, John.”

He licks his lips, trying to force his fingers to loosen their hold on the door handle, wonders what there is to fix, wonders if it was broken the day Sherlock jumped or long before that.

Sherlock says, “Things can be like they were before.”

And he—

He whips back around, hears himself say, snarl, bite out, the thought half-formed but terrible in its veracity, “I don’t _want_ —”

He can’t—

Sherlock is staring at him. Eyes wide. Lips parted. Body pressed back into the wall. Stunned into silence. Frightened, even.

John’s chest is heaving. His fingers are going numb around the door handle. He swallows, squeezes his eyes shut.

“We can’t go back to the way things were before,” he says, forces his words to come out even, firm. He doesn’t open his eyes to look at Sherlock again, turns his back once more.

There’s a beat of silence. A nearly inaudible intake of breath. “Of course.” Sherlock’s voice is little more than a quiet rumble now, subdued. “I should... rest.”

John knows a dismissal when he hears one. He escapes out into the corridor, manages to pull the door closed without slamming it. Harry’s door is open across the hall, his sister leaning in the doorway, waiting for him. John meets her gaze, can’t hide from the undisguised worry in her expression, can barely smother the emotions warring in him. He turns away, makes for the stairs, tries to force his mind around the solid thoughts of dinner, a bath, fresh clothes.

Once he’s inside his new room, though, John finds himself kneeling on the floor in front of the laundry basket still holding most of his worldly possessions, looking down at Sherlock’s smiling face in the one photograph John’s ever cared enough about to bother keeping. It was a candid shot, captured at their Christmas celebration by mere chance on Greg’s mobile phone and delivered to John six months later, the day of the funeral. Sherlock’s expression is pleased and just slightly shy – they’d been cajoling him into playing his violin for the gathering.

It was such an odd thing, that touch of bashfulness amidst his usual arrogance, as though performing for his closest friends was a more daunting prospect than the nearly weaponised uses he normally put the poor instrument to. He’d humoured them, shrugged off their praises afterward, even while stealing glances at John, his face aglow, so like the night of their initial case together. John can still remember the detective’s quiet incredulity that first evening, when his deductions had been met with awe and encouragement rather than spite and derision.

John carefully sets the photo down for fear of crushing it in his shaking hands, feels a sob heave its way through his chest. For the first time in months – a year – longer – hot tears burn in his eyes, nearly escape.

They can never go back there, can never recapture the simple joy of those days, not after all that’s happened, not knowing what he does now. It had been a slow downhill, a slippery slope that John hadn’t even realised he was descending until the end goal of it was pointed out to him, right in front of his nose.

It had been in Irene Adler’s clean, confident assertion:

“ _Yes, you are.”_

In the smile of a well-meaning innkeeper, polite, sincere:

_“Sorry we couldn’t do a double room for you boys.”_

In a strange, stormy sort of apology, impossibly rendered only all the more meaningful by the reserve that had preceded it:

_“I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one.”_

And in a single, treacherous, glimmering thought in John’s own head:

_My god, I would follow this man anywhere._

John had let himself believe, just for a moment, had let himself begin to hope, to imagine things he’d never before dared even dream of, never thought possible. Somehow, without even realising it, John had let himself fall in love.

And he’d thought, he’d _let_ himself think, for a time, that it was enough, that it would be enough. To be near Sherlock, to be at his right hand, stalwart and dependable, devoted. And it didn’t matter if anything ever came of it, if their relationship progressed in any semblance of the normal order, because loving Sherlock Holmes was anything but normal, anything but ordinary.

But it wasn’t enough. Apparently, in the end. And John almost can’t think it, can’t look at, like staring into the sun, burning him, a truth so terrible he’s locked it away, hidden beneath layer upon layer of careful denial, his mind even now fighting against fully acknowledging it.

 It wasn’t enough for Sherlock. _John_ wasn’t enough, despite his loyalty and support, it wasn’t enough to keep the detective occupied, keep him happy. But John knew that. Should have known it, all along, that plain old ordinary John Watson couldn’t compete, couldn’t possibly hold the focus of that great, churning mind. Sherlock needed distractions, puzzles, someone who could keep up with him, someone who would – and could – do anything, anything at all to engage his intellect, anything to stave off boredom, no holds barred, no lengths he wouldn’t go to. He needed someone clever, someone better than John.

Someone like James Moriarty.

 


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You wouldn’t think a touching reunion would be so much to ask for._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My wonderful sister, who has been the world's most patient beta and has made this fic infinitely better with her input, has finally started posting her own writing here on AO3 (after months of nagging from me ;) ) Go check her out! http://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon

Sherlock can fix this. He is  _going_  to fix this.

John doesn’t want to fix it. No,  _wrong_ : John doesn’t want a return to their circumstances whilst living at Baker Street. 

“ _Things can be like they were before._ ”

Sherlock’s words. Stupid, imprecise. What, exactly, had set John off? He was angry. Angry at Sherlock for returning, for disrupting his hard-won life here. Obvious:  _before_ , there had been Sherlock. Cases, adventure, danger. John likes danger, but not all the time. In moderation. There were, even back then, instances when he was tired, irritable, impatient.  _Now_ , danger is plentiful. Undead. Marauding gangs. Starvation, malnutrition, simple human sanitation. John’s danger quota is full up. He doesn’t need, doesn’t _want_ Sherlock adding to it. 

Sherlock is a burden. A nuisance. Additional, unnecessary, risk. Explosions, caustic chemicals, bullet holes in the wall. John knows better than anyone what sort of dynamic Sherlock might add to life here. 

He doesn’t have to be, though. A nuisance. He can behave himself. He can  _contribute_. 

Sherlock has to swallow his moment of (irrational, fatuous, idiotic) hope when Harry knocks on his door the next morning, thinking for one (moronic, insipid, imbecilic) second (even the daftest fool would be able to hear the difference in their gait, the contrasting strength with which their hands strike the wood of the door!) that it might be her brother coming to see him instead. 

Harry insists he eat breakfast with the group in the main hall, with the few of them that will tolerate his presence. John is there, but he doesn’t acknowledge Sherlock, doesn’t so much as glance over as they come limping out to the dining tables. Sherlock eats what Harry sets in front of him, his movements mechanical as the food sits heavy in his starved digestive system. In his peripheral vision, he can see John at the other end if the table, a soldier’s sharp efficiency evidenced in his every stab of fork and swash of cutlery. John finishes his meal quickly, shrugs off Harry’s persistent attempts to draw him into conversation, stands, takes his dishes immediately for washing. 

When John comes back from the spring, Sherlock is picking at the last of the beans on his plate. He is aware of John’s approach, the familiar pad of his shoes against the flagstones (very slightly favouring his right leg), a shadow coming to linger out of the corner of his eye – and then he glances up to find John standing several feet away (just beyond the length of Sherlock’s reach from his current seated position) at the end of the table, arms folded and apparently waiting for Sherlock to look up at him.

“I should have a look at your shoulder,” John says (no discernible inflection in his words; jaw lightly clenched, brows pinched, skin around his eyes tight – weary, fatigued, guarded).

“All right,” Sherlock answers, and drops his spoon to push to his feet.

“Careful!” Harry hisses, rising quickly next to him and catching his left arm when his balance starts to wobble.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Sherlock starts to snarl at her, just as John steps forward to rest a steadying hand on his back.

“I’ve got it,” he tells Harry. He doesn’t look up at Sherlock.

Harry squints across at her brother, frowning. “Are you two actually going to talk this time? Or are you just gonna yell at each other again?”

Sherlock refuses to give himself away, reveal his intent interest in and focus on John’s response, by looking down at John, but he can see John’s face flush scarlet out of the corner of his eye, can feel the tremor that runs through his arm and down his fingertips into Sherlock’s back. “I— _No_ ,” John sputters. “Just— sod off, Harry. I can handle this.”

“Fine,” Harry snaps, shooting him a glare as she resumes her seat, grumbling, “You wouldn’t think a touching reunion would be so much to ask for...”

John heaves an aggravated sigh, shakes his head. “Come on,” he mutters to Sherlock, nudging him toward the bedroom, where John’s medical kit is waiting. They make it nearly halfway there before Sherlock’s steps begin to falter and John pulls Sherlock’s good arm across his shoulders without comment.

John sits Sherlock down on the edge of the unmade bed before stepping across the room to pull the chair out of the far corner. He leaves the door hanging open to the corridor (specifically preventing a sense of privacy, intimacy; doesn’t want a repeat of yesterday). “Over here,” John says, setting the chair in the middle of the room and standing behind it like a barber. “This’ll be easier.”

Sherlock wordlessly hauls himself to his feet once more (abdominal muscles and quadriceps protest loudly; fatigued already; infuriating) and across the small distance to the chair, turning to sit with his back to John.

“We’ll have to take this off,” John says, tugging lightly at the hood of Sherlock’s jacket with a crooked finger. His voice is utterly devoid of emotion – professional bedside manner, nothing more.

John crosses the room to wash his hands in the bowl waiting atop the chest of drawers and retrieve clean flannels and antibiotic cream from his medical kit while Sherlock reaches up with his left hand to pull open the zipper at the front of the garment, lets it fall away to reveal his ruined shoulder and right arm tucked against his midsection in its sling.

Returning with hands still moist and smelling of bar soap, John circles around behind Sherlock, and a moment later his fingers gently palpate the edges of the burn (checking for seepage, for temperature differences, for inflammation and infection). He hums to himself, seeming satisfied, and begins to smear antiseptic across the cragged flesh. “How have your pain levels been?”

Sherlock finds he has to scramble to find his voice. “Uh— Better.” Inaccurate: he’s reasonably certain that the pain in his shoulder has diminished only marginally, but he’d been so mentally occupied with his plans and engineering blueprints that he’d barely finished a single bottle of wine yesterday.

“Scale of one to ten?” John asks. Perfectly, strictly, cool professional.

If ten is the point at which one blacks out from the pain ( _relief_ ), nine is screaming ( _burning_ ), thrashing uncontrollably ( _fire under his skin_ ), mind reduced to animal instincts of fight or flight ( _cut the pain out of him, John cutting his heart out_ ), and eight is foetal, weeping, inarticulate ( _don’t leave, John, **stay!**_ )— “Seven,” he says.

John nods, rests his hands on the back of the chair (waiting for the antibiotic to dry on Sherlock’s skin before replacing the sweatshirt; carefully not touching Sherlock in any capacity not required by medical procedure). “The other day,” John says abruptly, awkwardly, and Sherlock wills his body to relax, to not tense up at the mention of their (argument, fight, massacre)  _conversation_ the previous evening. “I… lost my temper.” John’s words are slow, halting, and he draws in a deep breath (chest expanding, shoulders hunching then dropping again – increase in oxygen levels to attempt to calm himself). “Look, you— you made your choice,” John continues (tone forced, experiencing difficulty speaking), “and I understand that. Obviously I don’t have any— You can do whatever you want. You don’t… You don’t _owe_ me anything, either.”

“John—” Sherlock frowns, twists around to look up at him. (Strange phrasing; utilised in John’s speech yesterday as well; makes Sherlock’s hackles rise, pinging something deep inside his brain, something he can’t quite pluck free of the noise around it.)

John meets Sherlock’s gaze over his burned shoulder before dropping his eyes to the floor, his hands flexing on the back of the chair. Sherlock watches John’s laryngeal prominence bob up and down beneath the skin of his throat as he swallows thickly. “The thing is,” John says, and pauses, purses his lips. “The thing you need to understand is… I meant what I said yesterday.” He finally looks up again, holds Sherlock’s gaze with eyes that are steady and very dark blue. “We can’t just pick up where we left off, like nothing has happened. You can do whatever you want, but… not with me. I can’t.”

Sherlock turns away, facing front as he tries (fails) to smother his grimace. “Of course,” he says, and has to push the words out through gritted teeth. As if that hadn’t been made perfectly clear when John ‘lost his temper’ the evening before, or in the forty eight hours prior to that in which he couldn’t bear to so much as stand in the same room as Sherlock, as if Sherlock is a simpleton who can’t comprehend the oh-so-subtle hints that have been dropped to indicate when he _isn’t wanted._

He reaches for the limp right sleeve of his jacket, yanks it back up and over his bared shoulder without caring if the antibiotic cream is fully dry. “If that’s all, _doctor_ ,” he bites out, and only has to endure a scant three seconds with John’s gaze weighing on the back of his head before the other man sighs and wordlessly trudges out of the room.

Sherlock does not fume. He does not rage or throw a tantrum or fly off in a huff, or any other of the moronically over-dramatised characterisations that have been employed to describe his behaviour over the years.

What he _does_ do is leap (only slightly unsteadily; the change in elevation is still making spots dance before his eyes) out of his chair the moment John disappears from view and fling himself (quite intentionally; he did _not_ trip) across the bed to root under the blankets closest to the wall until his good hand closes around the spiralled wiring of the notebook that holds all of his plans.

Enough of this. Sherlock is going to fix this, and he is going to fix it _now_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise you, you will get to see what Sherlock's idea of a solution is before much longer. He just... needs a properly dramatic build-up first.
> 
> Also, for anyone interested, the pain scale Sherlock thinks through in this chapter is based on the way I and other chronically ill/chronic pain sufferers have developed to rate our pain, because the way doctors phrase it (with 10 being "the worst pain you've ever felt") is almost entirely useless ;)


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This isn’t what he wanted. This isn’t anywhere **near** what he’d wanted._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the thanks in the world to Madame_Mary for her superfast Britpicking, and to GlassCannon, sister, beta, and wise teacher in the ways of angst.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the rhythm of daily life in the castle seems to shift subtly, stretching and reforming itself to accommodate the newest addition to their small community. Life goes on as ever, of course – there are still chores to be done, vegetables to be picked, supplies to be gathered, a new car to replace the one lost in the last raid – but John finds himself wondering at the relative peace, the quiet that has somehow prevailed despite their living in a world that includes both the hungry undead and one mad genius Sherlock Holmes.

Though, if John is being completely honest, Sherlock actually _has_ been quiet. Taciturn. What could almost be called _docile_.

He’s barely spoken a word to John since their fight and John’s subsequent attempt to smooth things over, to make his position clear. And it’s… Frankly, it’s exactly what John wanted. The best he could have hoped for, all things considered. But that doesn’t stop it from hurting, does nothing to lessen the steady ache in John’s chest, the sense of what they’ve lost, the knowledge that it was never really John’s to begin with, a phantom dream too quickly torn apart by waking daylight.

Sherlock sits still for John to inspect his shoulder once a day, to ensure that it’s healing up properly, and he’s dutifully attentive when John instructs him on the physio exercises he needs to start practicing to keep the musculature around the joint from atrophying as the rest of his body regains its strength. He answers John’s questions regarding his pain levels and changes in his range of motion, but those answers are more often than not delivered in single syllables and without any eye contact. The few times John does manage to catch Sherlock’s gaze, the pale grey irises are quick to look away, flicking down to study the floor or his left hand clenched in his lap, expression held in a neutral sort of frown but jaw visibly tight.

John is reminded, with a painful stab beneath his sternum, of the times when the detective’s boredom had nearly got the better of him, when fractious energy and snarled insults had eventually given way to limp exhaustion and sombre, silent gazes, a rocket trapped on the launch pad that had indeed torn itself to pieces and left nothing but a barren crater in its wake. One of the worst of those times, about six months into their acquaintance, they’d not had an interesting case in nearly three weeks and John had begun to truly fear for his flatmate’s sanity. He’d done his level best to engage Sherlock, board games, daytime telly, the newspaper crossword, magic card tricks, anything at all – but in the end, none of it was more than a fleeting distraction, mere tinder before the raging wildfire of Sherlock’s mind. Every day it went on was worse than the last, and John was increasingly sure he’d come home to the flat demolished, bullets and acid strewn haphazardly about the walls and furniture, acerbic criticisms of everything from John’s fashion sense to the sound of his breathing lined up like ammunition in a clip, ready to be released the moment he was in sight. After two and a half weeks of this behaviour, John was at his wits end, and as he’d arrived home from his shift at the surgery and climbed their seventeen steps, he’d determined not to put up with any more of Sherlock’s abuse. He would slip into the kitchen to make a quick cup of tea, and then beat a hasty retreat up to his room, ignoring anything Sherlock might try to throw at him, verbal or physical.

The oppressive silence that had greeted him when he’d stepped through the door that evening was not what John had expected at all. It felt like the stuffy quiet surrounding someone who had long been ill, someone who didn’t expect to ever recover enough to enjoy sunshine and fresh air again. It felt like the quiet of the dead. Tea forgotten, John dropped his briefcase on the kitchen table and stepped quickly into the sitting room, where he found Sherlock huddled in the corner of the sofa, pale and listless and about as pathetic as John had ever seen him.

It didn’t take a genius to note the pattern to the extra chaos in the room, and John didn’t hesitate to kneel down beside Sherlock, one hand peeling an eyelid back while the other grasped a thin wrist to check his pulse. John knew most of Sherlock’s usual hiding places by now, and he and Mrs Hudson had taken to routinely sweeping the flat for anything that could be construed as illicit or recreational, so he was fairly certain that there’d not been anything to hand, but the doctor in him still needed the reassurance of physical proof.

There were no track marks on his arms, no residue about his nose or mouth, and his eyes were clear despite the way he flinched away from the intrusion of afternoon sunlight, his pulse steady even as he shivered as though John’s hand against his skin was hot enough to burn him. He wasn’t high – just tired, unwashed, and miserable.

It was the next moment that had seared itself into John’s memory, when Sherlock’s eyes had slid open just a few millimetres before squeezing shut again as if sight itself, as if the further input of data he couldn’t sort out, couldn’t filter or block, was enough to cause him deep physical pain. He’d curled into himself, brows knit, mouth unhappy and quavering as something very like tears started to form around his thick eyelashes. “ _Make it stop, John_ ,” Sherlock had pleaded then, his voice nothing more than a thin whimper, utterly broken. “ _Please just make it **stop**_.”

It was hardly the first time John had felt that odd surge of protectiveness for his mad flatmate, but it was one of the few occasions, back then, so early in their relationship, when that urge had crystallised into a conscious thought, a knowledge that John would do anything, anything at all within his power, to keep this strange, magnificent, flawed creature safe, whether the threat were to come from the criminal underworld of London or from within the detective’s own mind.

John remembers pursing his lips, allowing himself a single second in which to wonder at the fact that this was anything but a hard decision for him. “ _Have you taken anything?_ ” he’d asked quietly, seriously, because he needed that confirmation even beyond his previous observations. Sherlock shook his head, cringing as if the motion sent his brain rattling wildly about in his skull, and John, fully determined now, had stood with a muttered, “ _I’ll be right back_ ,” and turned to climb the stairs up to his bedroom two at a time.

The little orange canister of sleeping pills had been prescribed by his therapist, back when he’d still been seeing her on a regular basis, and had been sitting amongst the rest of John’s medical kit ever since, untouched and, miraculously, undiscovered by his nosy flatmate – or perhaps simply disregarded as dull, boring. What he was about to do was entirely illegal, and, usually, entirely against John’s own code as a medical practitioner. _Desperate times_ , he’d thought grimly as he’d descended the stairs to fill a glass with tap water in the kitchen and take the pills into the sitting room to his waiting friend.

They’d never discussed that moment again, never paused to examine the aftermath of what it meant that Sherlock had reached out in his lowest, most desperate moment, and that John had responded instinctively, unquestioningly. Sherlock had slept for nearly twelve hours with the help of the medication, and when he’d awoken it hadn’t been long before a new case popped up to hold his attention. And so their lives had continued on.

There is something about this withdrawal, now, something that John can’t deny strikes a chord in him, that reminds him of the way Sherlock had been on that day so long ago – unwilling or unable to meet John’s gaze, any interaction with the world around him simply too much to bear.

But it’s not as though Sherlock has become some mute ghost silently floating about the castle: John has overheard him arguing about various petty issues with Harry, has come into the main hall to find him engaged in conversation with Kal or Emily, Caleb, Mary. He clams up the moment he notices John’s presence, though, mouth snapping shut and eyes dropping stubbornly away.

So it’s not the _world_ Sherlock can’t bear to interact with. It’s just John.

 _This is what you wanted,_ the bitter, pragmatic voice in the back of John’s thoughts reminds him. Coexisting, dancing carefully around each other, orbiting in the same star system but never quite meeting, never drawing near enough to be caught in each other’s gravity. John had laid out his boundaries, had made his position clear: there would be no more easy laughter and mad chases through the dark, no more quietly stitching him up under the yellow bathroom light, no more long looks, no more dropping everything, running off at a moment’s notice, giving up anything to be by his side—

Those are John’s terms.

And, by all appearances, Sherlock is abiding by them.

_This is what you wanted._

Quicksilver eyes taking him in, taking him apart, vast mind focused on him and him alone, hands that are elegant and clever and so very warm despite their marble cool appearance, a brush of soft lips and rough violinist’s calluses, a voice deep as thunder, as the sea, murmuring John’s name, whispering, gasping—

This isn’t what he wanted. This isn’t anywhere _near_ what he’d wanted. But it’s all he can have. And it will be enough.

It will have to be enough.

 


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d look at you and tell you your whole life story. Put the wind up everybody – we hated him._

Stage one of his plan is proceeding steadily, if agonisingly slowly. At the outset, Sherlock had (foolishly) allowed himself to indulge in brief excitement, in the reckless optimism of leaping mentally ahead to the desired results, as if all he need do was set the project in motion and it would be completed in the blink of an eye, equilibrium restored.

The beginning had certainly been promising. He’d managed to corner Kal with a little finesse, watching for a moment in which he was neither burdened with looking after his niece nor surrounded by the others of the castle who consider the brawny craftsman a friend (quick, sarcastic humour; considered handsome and masculine by conventional standards; confidence hanging about him like a fog; the type of person Sherlock would have staunchly avoided during his years in school). Sherlock had come armed with his blueprints and had made his argument swift, concise. He’d been prepared to negotiate some form of repayment – illicit substances he could acquire or formulate, weapon systems he could augment, favours he could perform, benign and unsavoury alike – but in the end, his contingency plans had not been necessary. Just as Sherlock had observed and deduced in their previous encounters, the other man was instantly entranced with the plans laid out before him, his enthusiasm showing freely.

“Shit, man, why didn’t I think of this?” Kal had breathed, a wide grin splitting his face as he studied the rough schematics. 

“Because you’re an idiot,” Sherlock had sniffed, and Kal had glared at him but still agreed to do the build. 

They’d also been in consensus, somewhat surprisingly, on one additional point: Sherlock’s involvement, his role as progenitor of this endeavour, must be kept secret, at least until the structure is fully operational. The integrity of the design is the first priority, and it is simply unacceptable that it might be met with resistance or even be prevented entirely from moving forward because Sherlock is  _unpopular._

( _He’d look at you and tell you your whole life story. Put the wind up everybody – we hated him._ )

The castle dwellers all seem to fall into one of three categories:

 _For –_ Harry, and those who consider her a friend: Emily, Kal, Caleb. The fact that Sherlock is often in tow wherever Harry goes means these three have gained more exposure to him and so have begun to deem him non-threatening.

 _Against_  – Anderson, chiefly, and any who accept his particular brand of stupidity as wisdom: Lorena, who is seemingly convinced that she needs to physically protect her preadolescent son from Sherlock (what she thinks he might do with the boy are a mystery to him, but then Sherlock’s never been much interested in extrapolating the imaginings of morons); Winston, who is deeply offended by the notion that there might exist a person of greater intelligence than himself (yet he was perfectly content in John’s presence for months, despite the quite obvious disparity in mental faculty there); and Tom, who acts only as an extension of his wife and tends to shoot apologetic looks at Harry or Emily or whomever happens to be nearby when he scuttles away, but never makes eye contact with Sherlock himself.

 _Neutral_  – Abigail, who seems to be withholding judgement on Sherlock until he’s fully recovered (values hard work and common sense; holds much respect for John; doesn’t care for Anderson despite (due to) having travelled with him before settling at the castle); Charles, who is apparently sincere in how much he does not care about the goings on amongst the rest of the castle’s inhabitants (barely speaks a word most days to anyone besides Abigail; agricultural worker, experience with livestock, prefers solitude; hails from the same small farming community as Abigail, who served as a surrogate mother or aunt figure when he was young); Mary, who daily vacillates between clumsy attempts at friendly conversation and wondering if perhaps Sherlock is in actuality merely biding his time until he can murder each and every one of them as Anderson has become so fond of proclaiming. 

And then there’s John.

John isn’t withholding judgement, nor is he indifferent to Sherlock’s presence. 

John would most assuredly (knowingly, rightly) put a stop to any creation that has sprung forth from Sherlock’s mind, experience informing him all too well of the disaster that might be wrought in the name of experimental science. 

John is tolerating Sherlock – for now.

Kal oversees the acquisition of building materials, begins hauling in drainage pipes and gutters scavenged from the houses in town, bags of cement mix and mortar and wiring to hold it all in place, answers the questions and curious glances of his companions with a shrug and a disarming laugh. Sherlock wants to pick his way up the jutting cliff trail to the roof of the castle, wants to inspect the chimney opening with his own eyes, see what they’ll have to work with, but Kal reminds him of the ever-prying eyes of the others around them, and Sherlock has to bite his tongue and force himself to trust in the other man’s expertise, his commitment to the project.

Sherlock sits down in the great hall every day instead, spends hours meticulously incorporating their materials into his plans, drawing up ever more detailed notes and diagrams of how best to make use of what they have available, while, overhead, Kal and the small group of helpers he’s gathered over the previous few days set about the actual physical labour.

The design is inelegant, sprawling and haphazard, but that is precisely the point of it: a web of pipes and tubing, beginning at the domed cement cover Kal has fashioned for the opening of the chimney above the giant fireplace in the main hall. The various pipes connect to the dome, secured into the holes left gaping around its edges, catching the hot smoke as it rises from the flames below, and from there they branch and split and reconnect, mismatched and chaotic and – most importantly – _leaking_.

John doesn’t talk to Sherlock, not outside of his medical duties, outside of his veneer of _Doctor Watson_. Sherlock doesn’t speak either, doesn’t allow the words bubbling inside of him to boil over, doesn’t let himself give in to the urge to grab John’s shoulders ( _shoulder_ , singular, or perhaps just the front of his jumper, something that could be managed with only one hand) and shake him, show him what Sherlock is doing, make him _see_.

Because Sherlock doesn’t _have_ to be a burden.

But it won’t do to overreach now. Let the project, the diffuser, be finished first, and let the results speak for themselves. Then, stage two, the water turbine, just to drive the point home. No result can be considered valid unless it can be replicated, after all. Then John will see, he’ll understand, and he won’t simply _tolerate_ Sherlock anymore.

He’s lost in his thoughts, in planning, when Harry, bane of his existence that she is, flops gracelessly into the chair next to him and drops a bulging canvas laundry bag onto the table, where it promptly overturns onto Sherlock’s note papers, briefly trapping his hand beneath its bulk.

“Do you mind?” he growls, yanking his hand free and shoving the bag away to level a glare at her.

“Oh, I’m sure your little diary entry or whatever will survive,” Harry grins at him. She’s been out in the sun, outside of the castle walls, not gone for long, and with sediment matching their local area still in her shoes. The nearby town, just south along the coast, not half an hour by car. “Those are for you,” she says, nodding at the bag as she reaches for an empty mug on the tabletop, “so you don’t have to keep stealing Kal’s clothes.” She stands, carrying a mug in each hand, goes to fill the copper tea kettle on its quietly smouldering coals. “You two have been spending an awful lot of time together recently,” she comments, glancing back at him with a smirk. “I dunno, maybe you _like_ stealing his clothes.”

“It is an alliance of necessity and nothing more,” Sherlock replies flatly, and only just resists the urge to roll his eyes at her. Abandoning his pen and paper, he reaches across the table to pick at the knotted closure of the laundry bag, a sort of sluggish curiosity pulling at him (dull, bored, _so bored_ , and the only work worth his attention at the moment is out of reach, directly over his head). The articles of clothing are allowed to spill from their confines onto the tabletop, where Sherlock can inspect them one by one, so far beyond uninterested that even the slight stimulation of deducing the lives and habits of the garments’ previous owners is a welcome distraction.

More often than not, the trousers are several sizes too big about the waist, or an inch too short at the ankle, or both. Despite her inability to estimate physical dimensions, Harry apparently does possess some amount of the Watson common sense, as she had the forethought to include in her haul pants, socks, and even a pair of sturdy hiking boots that look like they should fit him. There are a few button down shirts, though none that would adequately cover the breadth of Sherlock’s shoulders or the length of his arms, but the plethora of jumpers, tee shirts, and vests along with them would suffice for a reasonable coordination of layering – but not until he’s able to lift his right arm without his vision bleeding bright white, the limb and joint screaming at him, burning, throbbing. Until then, he’ll be stuck with the hoodie he’s been wearing for the past week, its fabric soft and relatively warm, and its zip front allowing him to dress with minimal pain or requisite assistance.

“Have you seen John today?” Harry asks as she sets a steaming mug in front of him and retakes her own seat, her tone light, conversational, attempting (utterly transparently) at casual innocence.

“No,” Sherlock answers, and grimaces, lifts the tea to his lips, swallows without caring what’s in it.

Harry scoffs, blowing steam from her tea. “Still avoiding you, eh? Dick.” Sherlock slants a glare over at her – but she’s not looking at him, frowning thoughtfully down at the table instead, and he realises (with some (very small amount of) surprise) that she meant the insult not for himself, but for her brother. Glancing back up at him, she asks, “You two _did_ talk, didn’t you? I mean, about the _important_ stuff?”

Sherlock shrugs his good shoulder, reaches for his notebook again. “I do recall stating that it was an inconsequential fact that would have little to no impact on John’s opinion of the events that day.” If anything, John had only seemed _more_ outraged to have heard it from Harry. ‘Doing Sherlock’s dirty work,’ as he’d put it, as if Sherlock had been trying to be coy, to hint that John should feel beholden to him without himself seeming ungracious by saying it.

 _“I don’t owe you anything,”_ John had said, as if Sherlock had arrived hat in hand, expectant as a bookie looking for repayment. Utterly ridiculous.

“Saving his life is not inconsequential!” Harry insists, kicking his calf under the table.

Sherlock looks over at her, snarling, “Life threatening situations are hardly uncommon in our line of work!” It was— He hadn’t had a _choice_ , obviously— A gun pointed at John’s head, a bullet set to impact skull and brain matter and explode out the other side, what was he _supposed_ to do?!

“Still,” Harry says, frowning stubbornly up at him. “Maybe if I talk to him...”

“Yes, because you’ve been _such_ a help on that front already,” Sherlock growls, turning away to bend over his blueprints once more, determined to ignore her.

Harry scoffs again, stands, taking her tea with her. “You’re just as big a dick as he is,” she says, and flicks the tip of his ear as she walks past to leave the room.

 


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You don't know what he can be like— He can fake **any** emotion, make you **feel** for him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I cannot thank GlassCannon and Madame_Mary enough for their help. None of this would be possible without them. :)

It’s a cool day midway through November, clouds grey and low-hanging in the sky. John wipes the sweat from his forehead with one sleeve, hefts the axe up onto his shoulder again, braces, swings down. The log splits into even halves, sides smooth for easy stacking. John bends, picks them up, sets the halves aside with the pile of others he’s cut already, before selecting a new section of wood to balance in front of him on the tree stump serving as a chopping block. 

Lift, swing, cut. Remove the spent log, set up a new one. The motions are repetitive, rhythmic, soothing. The trees around him are quiet, nothing but the whisper of branches and distant birdsong. Harry is thirty yards away, off to John’s right, building her own pile of fresh-chopped wood. It’s second nature by now to stay within sight both of each other and of the guards on the wall, weapons never far from their hands, but the distance separating them and the hush under the trees affords John a welcome sense of solitude. It’s a relief, a break from the constant pressing company of the others inside the castle. John feels like he can breathe again, possibly for the first time in days, weeks—  _a year and a half._

He shakes his head, pauses to wipe at his brow again, tries to hold onto the peaceful buzz over his thoughts. He’d been rather enjoying not having to think for a while, not having to second guess every step he took and every word he spoke, gladly losing himself in the physical labour for the short time that it lasted.

As if sensing his shift in mood, Harry seems to decide that now is as good a time for a breather as any. She sets her own axe down and comes strolling over, breath puffing and taking a long swig from her water bottle. John doesn’t acknowledge her approach, turns instead to start stacking his chopped logs into the wheelbarrow standing nearby for transport back to the castle.

“Got a pretty good haul there,” Harry comments, drawing even with him.

John nods, keeps working. After a minute, Harry sets her water on the ground and helps him move the logs. They labour in silence for a few minutes, the wheelbarrow gradually growing full.

“So I was talking with Sherlock the other day,” Harry says suddenly, obviously trying for a casual _oh-by-the-way_ shift in the conversation.

John doesn’t look up at her, doesn’t let show how his thoughts stutter to a halt at her words, forces his hands to keep moving. “Okay,” he says.

She picks up the last few pieces of firewood, straightens. John can see her studying him from his peripheral vision as he pulls his work gloves off to wipe the sweat and dust from his palms. “I thought you two were patching things up.”

He snorts. Then, realising she’s still watching him seriously, John shrugs, pulls the gloves back into place. “That might be putting it a bit strongly,” he hedges, and reaches again for his axe and a fresh log.

“Well, you’re not screaming at each other every day, at least,” Harry grins. John chops the log clean in half, sets up another. He can hear the smile falling away in Harry’s voice. “It just... sort of seems like you’re avoiding him or something.”

John pauses, tosses the newly chopped wood into the wheelbarrow. “What of it?”

Harry folds her arms. “So you _are_ avoiding him.”

John glances at her, turns back to his axe. “He doesn’t need you to defend him, you know.”

“I know,” Harry says, shaking her head. “I’m not. It’s just...  Don’t you think you’re being a bit unfair?”

“ _I’m_  being unfair?” John shoots back incredulously, and when he looks back at his sister, she’s frowning over at him, her expression disapproving and somehow disappointed.

“He came all this way to find you, Johnny,” she says. “Things will never get better between you if you don’t let it. Believe me, I _know_ —”

“Don’t try to compare this with you and Clara,” John interrupts, attempting, perhaps vainly, to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Harry sighs, shifts her weight. “Fine. But you know I’m right. And you know if I had this kind of second chance with her...” She trails off, her voice growing thick, and John mentally kicks himself.

He turns to face her, and after a moment lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know. I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. And she is right – he can’t for a moment let himself take for granted the miracle that it is to see Sherlock again, alive and well and just as John remembers him. Even if it’s not everything Harry seems to think it should be. Even if John can’t really have what he wants.

She nods, sucks in a steadying breath, and John knows he’s not imagining the tears she tries to quickly blink away. He makes a mental note to keep an eye on her this evening, make sure all of the liquor is accounted for.

“I just think,” Harry says after a moment, her voice firm once more, “that you’re wasting the opportunity that’s in front of you.”

John shakes his head, lets his hand fall from her shoulder, turns back to the tree stump to set up another log.

“Look, I’m not saying what he did was right. No one would dispute that it was a pretty dick move to let you think he was dead for all that time, but you have to admit his heart was in the right place. I mean, in the larger scheme of things—”

John’s swing goes awry, the blade of the axe glancing off the log and embedding itself in the edge of the tree stump instead. “His  _heart?_ ” he echoes, turning back toward her. “You think his  _heart_  was in the  _right place?_ ” His breath sounds suddenly harsh and ragged in his ears. “When he  _ran off_ , when he made me  _watch_  him  _kill_  himself – all for his own entertainment!  _That’s_ what you think?”

Harry is frowning at him, confusion and irritation plain on her face. “His own…? There was a gun pointed at your head, John, I don’t see how entertainment comes into it at all.”

“You— What?” John shakes his head, tries to make sense of her words.

“The death threats,” Harry says, doggedly, like he should know what she’s talking about. “The— Didn't you two  _talk_  about this?”

“We talked—” John starts, while in his mind he can hear Sherlock asking if he’d spoken with Harry, the way he’d wanted her to soften John up, to put in a good word for him.  _Don’t send Harry to do your dirty work for you,_  John had told him. “What did he say to you?” he asks, quietly, calmly, voice pressed flat with fury.

Harry is staring at him, confused and defensive. “He  _saved_  your  _life_ , John! God, why are you being such a sodding  _prick_  about this? I thought you’d  _talked_ —”

“ _What_ did he _tell_ you?” John demands again, dropping the axe against the side of the wheelbarrow. He pushes his hands back through his hair, feels his body fairly thrumming with frustration. “You don't _know_ what he can be like— He can fake  _any_  emotion, make you  _feel_  for him, feel  _sorry_  for him, he can be so  _convincing_ —”

“He wasn’t faking anything, John!” Harry replies, responding to his anger and tension in kind. “He just— just said it. Like it was nothing.”

But John shakes his head, scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No, _no_ , he _wants_ you to think that— He wants—”

“John! Harry!” 

John looks up at the new voice, sees Caleb running out toward them, waving his arms to get their attention. The teenager skids to a stop a short distance away, panting. “John— There’s trouble— You'd better come quick—”

“What is it?” John asks, feels himself slip with some relief into a role he knows well, soldier and peacekeeper and leader, his argument with Harry set aside for the moment as they begin to beat a path back toward the castle.

Already running ahead, Caleb glances over his shoulder and says only, “It's Sherlock!”

John feels his sister’s eyes on him, and he looks over, knows that the same apprehension and worry he sees in her face must surely be reflected on his own. Not sparing another moment, they set off at a run, following Caleb’s slight form back toward the looming dark mass of the castle’s walls.

 


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re going to shut up, right now,” John says, voice calm, quiet, precise (the same voice John uses when telling an assassin twice his height that he **will** kill him)._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter this time! Enjoy! :D
> 
> (Also: Anderson is a dick.)

Generally speaking, Sherlock does not particularly dislike children. He doesn’t especially like them either, his attitude toward the group as a whole falling somewhere in the vicinity of ambivalent. While they’re messy, fragile, easily upset, and often entirely unreasonable, a young mind can, at times, show exceptional creativity and perceptiveness, free of the expectations and prejudices that bog down most adults. 

Of course, for every bright, open-minded young mischief maker, there are at least three who determinedly follow in the steps of their parents’ insurmountable stupidity, absorbing it like it’s in the air they breathe at home or the food that’s set in front of them. Perhaps it is – while there has been little evidence to support the claim that intelligence is passed on genetically (Holmes family standards notwithstanding), heightened levels of lead emissions in the atmosphere have been tracked and shown to have at least a strong correlation, if not proven causation, with lower IQ and greater propensity for violent behaviour and (unimaginative) crime. 

Not that lead poisoning is relevant here, nor exceptionally poor parenting, as far as Sherlock’s seen. This incident could, however, be qualified as petty theft, thus suggesting that living under a near-constant threat of mortal peril for months on end might have a similarly erosive effect on a developing mind’s sense of right and wrong. 

Whatever the cause, the result is bloody inconvenient. 

It was simple carelessness on Sherlock’s part. He’d been sitting in the great hall as has become his habit, reviewing the blueprints for the smoke diffuser and mentally comparing his plans against the progress Kal has made up on the roof (which Sherlock had  _finally_  managed to view, slipping outside under the cover of darkness and sneaking past the guards on the wall (no light sources with them outside at night, due to the danger of attracting wandering undead who would otherwise simply pass them by unawares) to carefully climb the rough-hewn outer staircase up to the top of the castle and inspect the project by moonlight). It wasn’t nearly finished yet, though he’d decided the progress was satisfactory, not worth harassing Kal to speed things along and perhaps thereby put the entire build in danger by revealing Sherlock’s involvement. 

Between the extra exertion and missed hours of sleep the previous night (becoming far too dependent on regular sleep patterns, must break this ( _annoying_ ) habit), his body has been complaining constantly, shoulder aching and brain foggy, and at some point whilst noting down how many more pipes they would need to scavenge in the next week for production to continue unabated, the steady ache under his skin had crescendoed rather suddenly into a sharp scream of pain. He’d adjusted the sling on his arm, tried to roll the joint into a more comfortable position, and finally reached for the wine bottle he’d been nursing since dinner last night – only to find it empty.

Biting back a string of curses, he’d shoved to his feet, sparing only enough thought to flip his notebook closed before stalking off to the larder to retrieve a fresh bottle of alcohol. 

The cool air in the underground cave that served as the castle’s storage pantry had been like a balm, sweeping across skin he hadn’t realised was beginning to feel feverish from the strain of the sudden flare in his shoulder. It was dark down there, the floor uneven, the only source of illumination the sunlight creeping down the shallow staircase from the great hall above. If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have fetched a candle before venturing down here. As it was, it took a few moments of fumbling before he found the familiar shelf against the back wall where the liquor was kept. 

He’d grasped the first bottle his fingers closed around, twisting it open in a one-handed move he’d perfected over the last weeks, and taken several long swallows before pressing the cool glass against his right shoulder under his jacket, desperate for relief, for anything to crowd out the bright, blinding pain. 

Feeling sloshy and well chilled, Sherlock had eventually restoppered the bottle for the return trip to the main hall, climbing the stairs on feet made unsteady by his body’s adrenal response to pain rather than by the alcohol that hadn’t yet had time to fully enter his bloodstream. 

At the top of the stairs, he had stopped, blinking a few times and frowning at the sight before him. 

It had seemed innocuous enough at first glance: Sasha (Kal’s niece, Emily’s daughter, approaching her sixth birthday, heretofore shown a moderate interest in Sherlock’s studies, particularly wanting to look over his shoulder at the pictures in  _Public Executions_ ) was perched in what had minutes before been Sherlock’s seat, her dark hair swept up in a high ponytail (complete with pink ribbon, Emily’s touch), her head bent over the table as her hand moved with distinct, single-minded purpose across its surface. 

A flash of colour: a crayon in her hand. Of course. Drawing. 

Drawing all over Sherlock’s notebook, to be exact, and just as he’d begun to cross the room to snatch the spiral-bound paper away from her (and perhaps deliver a strongly-worded lecture on the merits of respecting personal property or at least learning not to be so  _obvious_  about it if she’s to be a thief), the unthinkable had happened. 

Lorena had been watching the two children that morning (giving her son all of the answers for his schoolwork and all but ignoring Sasha). The blonde woman (harpy) still does not care for Sherlock, though she’s come to tolerate his presence in the neutral territory of the great hall, so long as he sits at the very farthest end of the table and doesn’t look at her or try to speak to her – not that that’s much of a hardship for Sherlock (though he had tried to make the argument that, of the two of them,  _her_  voice was the more discordant and grating, so surely  _she_  should be the one under forced silence. (Upon hearing his logic, Harry had laughed in his face, reached impudently over to ruffle his hair, and said, “Just try not to start any catfights, Sherly.” To which he’d of course responded,  _“Stop calling me that!”_ ))

He was five long paces away when Lorena had drawn even with the little girl, asking (disinterestedly) what she was doing instead of her reading lesson.

Four paces away when Sasha proudly pointed to her drawing, claiming it contained her “whole castle family.”

Three paces away when Lorena had looked not at the crayon depiction of building and stick people, but at the schematics on the opposite page, the list of supplies. 

Two paces away when a deep frown had creased her face and her eyes had begun to widen in realisation. 

One pace away – and the woman snatches the notebook off of the table, rounding on him with a hand out in front of her like a constable directing traffic, while the other holds the notebook against her chest, protective and out of his reach. 

“That’s mine!” Sherlock snarls at her, lunging to try and take it back.

She skitters away, skirts around the end of the table (unexpectedly light on her feet –  _that’s_  how she’s survived all this time). “I  _knew_  there was something shifty going on here!” she shrieks, and her free hand clamps around her son’s shoulder, ignoring his protests as she pulls him out of his chair and backs toward the front door. 

(She doesn’t spare a moment’s thought for Sasha, apparently content to leave the (now rather distraught) child in the hands of the psychopathic serial murdering mad scientist. (The page opposite Sherlock’s blueprints is flapping freely in the breeze. On it is a rudimentary drawing of a large grey building (the castle) with a man (Kal), a woman (Emily), and a little girl (Sasha) standing in the foreground, and a host of smaller stick figures scattered around behind them, representing all the rest of the castle’s inhabitants. (The figure with the black curly-cues on its head only has one arm.)))

Lorena dashes outside, screeching her husband’s name at the top of her lungs. Sherlock is right behind her, though he has to catch himself in the doorway, the recent flash of pain and self-medicating only adding to the new surge of adrenaline in his veins, making his head swim briefly. He only allows himself a short pause before giving chase, though, as Lorena is already dashing up the trail to where her husband and the others are working on the roof.

“Tom!  _Tom!_  Get away from there this instant!”

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Caleb calls down from his guard post on the wall, he and Emily and Winston turning to look inward at the sudden commotion.

“It’s some kind of  _plot_ _!_ ” Lorena shrieks, as, below, Sasha comes stumbling out of the front door, bawling incoherently over the loss of her artwork. Emily scrambles down from the wall, running immediately across to her daughter while the other woman continues her tirade. “He’s going to poison us all with something in the smoke, or roast us alive in our beds! I  _told you_  he couldn’t be trusted!”

“That’s not—” Sherlock yells after her, but after just a few steps his sock-clad feet are slipping against the uneven steps, and he barely manages to right himself, clinging to the stones of the cliff face with his good hand, breath rasping loud through bared teeth.

“Hey, hey, everybody just calm down!” Kal says, intercepting Lorena halfway across the roof with hands held out, placating.

“Did you know about this?!” Anderson demands, rounding on the other man just as Sherlock _finally_ reaches the summit.

“Yeah, I did,” Kal snaps, glaring back at him. “And it’s not any kind of trick, it’ll do exactly what I said it would—”

“Why, because the _psychopath_ told you so?” Anderson sneers, flinging a hand out to gesture toward Sherlock.

“Now, now, there’s no need for name-calling,” Abigail scolds, frowning over at Anderson from her spot on the far side of the web of pipes, while Sherlock snarls out, “Exactly how many repetitions of simple facts are required for your anencephalic skull to finally absorb them? I am _not_ —”

“Right, right, you’re not a _psychopath_ ,” Anderson cuts him off, sarcasm dripping heavy from each word. “You’re a high-functioning _sociopath_ , how could I forget?” He looks back at Kal. “Like that’s so much better.”

Lorena grabs her husband’s arm and hisses, “I _told_ you!”

“Is that true?” Abigail asks, a thread of danger, of warning, woven into her voice, while Charles hovers like a silent shadow at her shoulder, deep frown lines etched into his face as his dark eyes never leave Sherlock’s face. ( _Expressions reminiscent of peers in secondary school and university, generally succeeded quickly by efforts to physically intimidate, drive away, or harm the perceived threat._ )

Sherlock feels his body tensing, shifts his weight, rifles quickly through his training for defensive techniques that are possible to perform one-handed. (Opponents possess little to no formal combat training; most of them unlikely to have sought physical solutions to altercations in the past; living under constant threat to life and limb lowers inhibitions against violence.)

(Always hated _Lord of the Flies_. Mycroft got to be Ralph and Jack all at once; no roles left for Sherlock. Didn’t want any of the roles to begin with.)

“I, uh,” Kal struggles for words, gives up, looks over at Sherlock with slow-dawning horror in his eyes.

( _and Sherlock has seen that look before, knows it all too well, knows the sort of person who would look at him that way, the sort who writes ‘hey buddy’ in email but laughs at the word ‘friend’ and says aloud ‘we all hated him’)_

Possible to defend himself against a single attacker even without the use of his dominant hand, though multiple assaults would prove more of a challenge; escape is the most viable option, though the gradient and narrowness of the staircase make haste unwise.

No, jumping to conclusions. Pay attention: body language. Observe: all appear defensive, uncertain, fearful. Likeliness to attack: minimal. Best course of action: retreat.

“You’re all idiots. The whole lot of you,” Sherlock bites out, and he _knows_ it’s a weak, juvenile response, but he’s so far beyond caring in the _slightest_ as he spins on his heel, left hand clenched in an infuriated fist, stomps away toward the stairs – and freezes.

“What’s going on up here?” John asks, stopping halfway up the staircase, Harry and Caleb close behind him. His question could be for anyone, but his eyes are trained on Sherlock alone, blue depths hard as the stone under their feet, judgmental and knowing, absolutely right in his assurance that, whatever the problem might be, Sherlock is without a doubt the cause.

“Your _friend_ ,” Lorena spits, clinging to Tom’s arm as if to shield herself from the rabid psychopath, “is trying to poison us all!”

“Bollocks!” Harry cries, scowling at the other woman, while John sighs and ascends the last few steps up to the roof.

“What are you talking about?” John asks, and he sounds tired, resigned, the same tone of voice as when he discovers new scorch marks on the kitchen ceiling. He seems to be addressing the others, but he glances up at Sherlock with a frown.

“It’s not _finished_ , John—” Sherlock says at first, but of course John knows that, of course he’s taken his turn working alongside Kal just like everyone else has, only he didn’t know Sherlock had any hand in it. “It’s not an experiment—” he tries next, because John had specifically said _no experiments_ , no causing trouble, but he’s _not_ , he’s trying to _help_ —

John just keeps looking up at him, mouth pressed flat, forehead crinkled, shadows under his eyes – frustrated, angry, _disappointed_.

No, no, _no!_

“I just wanted—” Sherlock says, and then all of a sudden he’s run out of words, they’ve all dried up and blown away in the face of John’s disapproval.

“Oh my god,” someone exhales behind him, and when Sherlock looks around, ready to impale whomever might dare to find this _amusing_ , it’s _Anderson_ , of _course_ , and there’s a terrible sort of grin plastering itself across his despicable little face, a light in his eyes indicating that one of his two functioning brain cells has just managed to fire off. “Oh my god, it’s _true_ , isn’t it?” And he laughs. He _laughs._ “You did all of this to impress your little pet doctor, didn’t you?”

He should make him stop talking, should lay out each and every way in which Anderson is wrong, wrong, _wrong_ – even if it is for John, it was all for John, all of it, right from the beginning, but it’s not that _simple_ and Sherlock can’t seem to find his voice, can’t find any of his usual words, not while John’s face is frozen like that, anger and disappointment still hovering about the corners of his eyes, lips parted as if to speak but words have apparently deserted John’s tongue as well.

Anderson goes on in their silence. “You know he’s always been obsessed with you,” he says, turning his gleeful sneer on John now. “You should have heard the way he used to complain to Lestrade anytime you had to work, much less if you had a _date_.”

 _There_ – _that_ , that he can correct, _that_ he has words for! “I did not _complain_ to Lestrade,” Sherlock snarls, but Anderson ignores him.

“It’s probably the closest a bloody _sociopath_ like him can come to being in love with someone,” Anderson grins, and John’s eyes finally flick up to his face. “I mean, everyone’s been talking about how he jumped off a building to keep you from having your brains blasted out, probably thought it was the grandest romantic gesture of all t—”

Anderson breaks off with a yelp as John is suddenly right in front of him, his tan, solid, surgeon’s hands, _killer’s_ hands, wrapped firmly in the taller man’s shirtfront.

“You’re going to shut up, right now,” John says, voice calm, quiet, precise (the same voice John uses when telling an assassin twice his height that he _will_ kill him).

Anderson swallows and doesn’t say anything else.

John looks past him to the sprawling hodgepodge of pipes and gutters, holes bored or cut into them and all barely held together with wire and cement. “There’s nothing tricky or underhanded about this,” he says evenly, raising his voice just slightly to address the group at large. “Once it’s done, it’ll spread the smoke out enough that we’ll be able to keep the fire in the main hall lit during the day without attracting attention – which I’m sure we can all agree will be a nice change when winter sets in. No one’s going to be _poisoned_ ,” he adds wryly, and glances up, catches Kal’s eye, gives a half shrug. “The terror cells in Afghanistan used to mask their mountain encampments just like this by using natural fissures in the cave ceilings,” he says by way of explanation. “Made it practically impossible to find them.”

“Uh. Right,” Kal says, and scrubs a hand through his hair. He looks around at the others. “Well. Back to work, guys?” He glances once at Sherlock, gives some sort of partial smile that is perhaps meant to communicate apology, and then turns away to resume working.

And just like that, the fight is forgotten. Lorena looks frustrated and unsatisfied, and Tom casts Sherlock one last suspicious look, while Abigail and Charles both appear to be sizing him up and exchanging silent glances with each other, no longer withholding their judgment of whether or not he might be a contributing member of their community. The majority of the castle dwellers (not surprisingly) seem content to defer to John’s leadership in this matter.

John looks back at Anderson, who is trying to conceal his fear at still being anchored in place by John’s fists (not unreasonable, considering they’re a mere three metres from the edge of the roof and John is much stronger than him (surely the forty foot drop to the courtyard wouldn’t do all _that_ much damage; not as though Anderson has much to lose by landing on his head), though John would never do that, would only ever consider such an act in extreme circumstances, desperation, life-or-death situation, or as a reflexive reaction to severe triggering of his post-traumatic stress (but Anderson doesn’t need to know that)), with a look of sour distaste. Anderson visibly flinches when John gives him a very small shove and then lets him go, not even enough force to rightly make him stagger.

John turns away, back towards the stairs, his face grim, and he doesn’t look up when he stops next to Sherlock, but he makes eye contact with his sister, still standing a few steps down from them. A wry smile starts to pull at Harry’s mouth after a moment, and she shakes her head and says, “Damien, you dick.” And then she elbows past them to go help build Sherlock’s smoke diffuser.

Sherlock watches her go, then looks down with a confused frown as a familiar (such an inadequate word – he’s not _familiar_ with John’s hands, he would know them anywhere, after any stretch of time, could identify them with nothing but a slide of one square centimetre of his skin) hand settles against the small of his back.

“Come on,” John says, and when he looks up at Sherlock this time there is somewhat of a lessening of the tightness about his eyes and mouth, irises waves and sky now instead of hard sapphire, “let’s get you back inside.”

Sherlock makes a mental note as John helps him descend the narrow stone steps, his warm palm never leaving Sherlock’s back: 

_Stage one not yet complete, but preliminary results appear promising._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t actually know if any groups in the Afghan mountains used the technique of diffusing smoke from their fires to stay hidden, but there are records of some of the ancient mountain-dwelling civilizations over here in the Americas doing that. I figure, anywhere there are caves... /shrug


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock's back is warm through the fabric of his hoodie, warm and solid and real under John’s palm, an anchor in the storm._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to GlassCannon for all her betaing and hand-holding, and to Madame_Mary for her always super fast Britpicking. :)

John is spinning, reeling, caught in a tailspin, winds buffeting at him, gravity pulling him in a thousand different directions at once, pulling him apart.

_“Everyone’s been talking about how he jumped off a building to keep you from having your brains blasted out.”_

Harry had said the same thing. Not in so many words. But Harry doesn’t know Sherlock well, Harry could have been fooled—

_“There was a **gun** pointed at your head, John! He  **saved**  your  **life**!”_

But Anderson—

_“It’s probably the closest a bloody **sociopath**  like him can come to being in love with someone.”_

It was Anderson. Of course it was. Anderson, the one person who, in a million years, would never fall for Sherlock’s acting, would never believe him to be a normal person no matter what emotions he tried to fake. But he’d believed Sherlock when he said there’d been death threats, when he said he’d jumped to save John’s life.

It hadn’t been an act.

Of all people – fucking _Anderson!_

John squeezes his eyes shut, resists the urge to shake his head, feels like he’s underwater, lost in a deep, dark sea with no sense of which way is up anymore.

He opens his eyes just in time to catch Sherlock facing front again, trying to hide the glance he’d shot John over his shoulder. His back is warm through the fabric of his hoodie, warm and solid and real under John’s palm, an anchor in the storm.

Time seems to have slowed – John doesn’t remember there being quite this many steps on the way up the stairs – but at some point, just as they’re nearing the ground, he’s pulled from his pinwheeling thoughts by Caleb’s voice, calling out to them as he comes trotting down after them, waving Sherlock’s notebook in the air. “You forgot this,” he says, holding it out with a smile. Sherlock makes no move to take it, and so John reaches to accept it. “Awful lot of trouble over a little kid’s drawing,” the teenager jokes, slipping past them to resume his guard post atop the wall.

“Ta,” John calls distractedly after him, turning the notebook over in his hands, lined pages fluttering like crisp autumn leaves. The notebook is folded open, one side displaying roughly drawn blueprints of the smoke diffuser that’s being built up on the roof, while on the opposite face is the crayon drawing Caleb had mentioned, the classic family-and-home setup, with what appear to be Emily, Kal, and little Sasha in the foreground. John finds himself in the background easily enough, a crude stethoscope drawn around his neck and a stick figure that can only be Harry stood nearby. Sherlock’s one-armed representation almost makes him smile – until he realises that the two of them have each been drawn on the very edges of the paper, about as far apart as it’s possible to be within the confines of the little crayon world.

From the mouths of babes, indeed.

He glances up – directly into Sherlock’s pale eyes. The detective is two steps further down the stairs, putting them at equal heights for once, and he holds John’s gaze only briefly, something between a question and a challenge in his expression before he turns away again, continuing carefully down the final few steps. John follows, their physical connection broken but his hands still held out in front of him, ready to catch Sherlock the moment his balance starts to falter.

“I believe I can manage from here,” Sherlock says softly, not looking at John, and his stride instantly lengthens as his feet touch down on the coarse grass of the courtyard, carrying himself away towards the castle’s front entrance without so much as another glance back at John.

John has to jog to keep up. “Sherlock—”

Sherlock pauses at the bottom of the short steps leading up to the doorway, looks over his shoulder at John with a momentary flicker of surprise – followed quickly by what might be suspicion. Above them, on the wide stone landing, Emily is standing with her daughter, who is clinging to her mother’s legs and sniffling pathetically while staring down at Sherlock with wide, imploring eyes.

“Hand me that,” Sherlock says, apparently deciding that John’s presence isn’t entirely unwelcome as he reaches with his good hand for the notebook. John relinquishes it, raising his eyebrows in question, but Sherlock doesn’t meet his gaze.

“What on earth happened up there?” Emily hisses at them, in the sort of stage-whisper voice all parents seem to use when they’re demanding information while simultaneously trying not to upset recently settled children.

“Nothing of import,” Sherlock replies blandly. He holds the notebook up with its single crayon-adorned page between thumb and forefinger, then twists his arm so the rest of the book is wedged under his elbow, against his side. With one deft tug, he tears the page free of its spiral binding, then wordlessly hands the drawing off to Emily as he continues past them and into the great hall.

John blinks, exchanging a shocked look with Emily, but she just shrugs and kneels down to show Sasha what she has in her hands. Shaking his head, John follows Sherlock inside, catching sight of him just as he disappears around the corner into the residential hall.

“Sherlock,” John calls, dogging the other man’s steps. He gets no reply, but the door to his room is still open when John rounds the corner, so he takes that as a good sign. He stops on the threshold, folds his arms nervously, decides against trying for nonchalance by leaning against the doorjamb. Sherlock’s back is turned to him, restlessly rearranging items on top of the bedside table and in its open drawer with his good hand. John takes a deep breath, “Look, what Anderson said—”

“Anderson is a moron of the highest degree who likes to ascribe motivations based not on verifiable evidence but on his own pedestrian desires to witness scandal and intrigue – a trait I suspect he acquired from spending so much time in Sergeant Donovan’s company, though to be honest, the entire Met was generally rife with the type of gossip that could only be got from those idiotic television programs you used to watch with Mrs Hudson on your days off from the surgery.”

John blinks, taken aback by the torrent of words, and has to fight down the queasy turn in his stomach at the easy mention of the dead and assumed-dead. All this Sherlock says in a quick, flat tone of voice, condescending, bored – and without once looking around at John. “I assure you,” Sherlock adds after a moment, a sneer evident in his voice now, “you needn’t read any further into the incident. Obviously it was no different from any of the numerous other times at which I was required to dispatch a criminal who had you at gun-point.”

John feels his back straighten, shoulders pushing down and back, his body instinctively snapping to attention to hear the answer to his biggest question thrown out so carelessly, the confirmation that there’d been more going on that day than John had known, that the threat to John’s life had been what had prompted Sherlock’s supposed suicide and not— Not any of the things John had thought. This one simple fact has had him reeling, as though his world’s been tipped sideways, a snowglobe upended into a flurry of chaos – or, he thinks, maybe it’s actually finally been set to rights again. Maybe John’s only disoriented now because he’d learned to survive in his skewed reality, had grown accustomed to it for so long that he didn’t even remember what the right way up felt like.

It’s like a blast of light and colour in a landscape he hadn’t even realised had been washed grey with desperation and grief. Like a sailor lost at sea finally feeling solid ground under his feet again after an eternity of waiting to drown, waiting to be forgotten and forsaken and swallowed up in the dark.

And, apparently, it means nothing to Sherlock, who still won’t even _look_ at John.

 _Well, whose fault is that?_ a vicious little voice in John’s head asks him. John was the one to impose this distance between them. He was the one who’d laid down rules, who’d said he wouldn’t be tolerating any of Sherlock’s _bollocks_ this time, who’d stated, unequivocally, that they would not, could not, return to the state of their friendship from before his disappearance. John had created this wedge between them, had fashioned it out of thin air and hammered it into place, pushing them farther and farther apart with every blow in a hopeless attempt to protect himself, to claim some space in which to lick his wounds and try to find some way to keep the loss and abandonment from eating him alive.

And— And it wasn’t true. None of it.

Feeling determination and something that just might be _hope_ begin to glow in the centre of his chest for the first time in he-doesn’t-even-know-how-long, warming him, fuelling him, John steps over the threshold into Sherlock’s room and closes the door behind him.

 


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Because you don’t get to threaten Sherlock Holmes’ loved ones and continue to walk the face of the earth._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah, sorry this chapter is soooo late, guys! I understand it's nearly Wednesday for some of you by now... :( This was a rough one to write, and I've spent the day trying to decide if it's good enough to post or needs further polishing. (Incidentally, I didn't even get it over to the indispensible Madame_Mary for Britpicking until today, so any dumb American mistakes herein are entirely my own fault. -___-)

Sherlock looks around at the sound of the door closing – with John on the wrong (right, this is right, John is here, how could that be wrong) side of it (no, wrong, it’s too early, too soon, damn Anderson for throwing his idiotic spanner into Sherlock’s plans).

“We need to talk about this,” John says, looking up at Sherlock as he turns away from the door. He leans back, folding his arms, ((perhaps) unconsciously) resuming the exact position in which he’d stationed himself during their last (fight) talk. 

Sherlock scowls, faces the bedside table again. “I don’t see  _why_ ,” he replies, arranging the pens and odd pocket knife inside the open drawer (order ascending left to right, according to length). “You’ve never before exhibited any difficulty in assuring people of your heterosexuality. Why should now be any different?”

(Was that too much? It might have been too much. Must watch his tone – petulant, sulking, childish:  _avoid_. Will incite suspicion. (Does he want John to be suspicious? Uncertain. Results inconclusive. (Not his area.) Irrelevant in any case: eliminate the impossible. Whatever remains is the only feasible course of action.))

John is silent. Shocked. (Suspicious?) Carefully considering his next words (always so steady, thoughtful, stalwart). “That’s… not what I meant,” he says at last. (Wary. Doesn’t want to address that particular issue. Fine.)

(Wait – what other issue is there?)

Sherlock doesn’t look back at John, doesn’t ask what he means (that would be cheating, now wouldn’t it). He’d started by bringing up Anderson, but apparently not in regards to the comment about ‘romantic gestures.’ (Moron.) What else had Anderson said? Nothing new, nothing that hadn’t already been common knowledge. Then what—

“That day,” John says (breathing slightly louder than usual, shaky (stress, not sickness), likely experiencing a moderate spike in adrenaline in preparation for what he expects will be a stressful encounter), “at Bart’s. When you—” He breaks off, swallows audibly. Tries again. “There were death threats? Against me?”

Sherlock frowns, turns to look at him. “You, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade, yes.” What is the purpose of this discussion, of rehashing an entirely insignificant detail of one day over a year ago? He’d known that it might come to that, that he might be required to enact his plan to fake his death when he’d been preparing to meet Moriarty. Sherlock’s own downfall had been the consulting criminal’s final goal, and what better way to ensure cooperation than to threaten the few people whom Sherlock might actually mourn (except Molly, of course. Everyone forgets Molly). He had plotted it out, had hoped his contingency plan would not in the end be necessary, but that is the entire point of contingency plans: when everything else fell through, he would still have a way to come out the winner. 

The fact that John’s life had been in danger was not, itself, important in the overall preparations, regardless of anything Harry or Kal or any other of the rest of their woefully average companions might think. They faced danger on a daily basis, quite intentionally, and Sherlock had never bothered to keep a tally of how many times they had each saved the other’s life because it had been a given ever since their very first case together, a basic fact of their existence. They saved each other, no hesitation, no questions asked. One more instance could hardly tip the scales in either direction.

Besides, John’s known about this for weeks. Why discuss it now when it’s done nothing to abate his anger thus far?

(John appears emotionally invested in their dialogue, though: eyes wide, locked on Sherlock’s face, lips pursing restlessly, expression eager, hopeful, arms folded and feet planted in what might be construed as a defensive posture, but his hands – his hands are all wrong (no, they’re right, always right, always strong and stable and gentle), his hands aren’t burrowed under his arms so as to present the smallest target possible, as people do when they’re frightened, stressed, cornered – John’s hands are holding him together, arms wound tight but straining outward, an explosion desperately trying to keep itself contained.)

“Are you sure this is wise?” Sherlock questions, allows a slight sneer to enter his voice. “The last time you requested a ‘talk’ there was in fact more  _yelling_  involved than talking.” He turns away again, feels the sneer transform itself into a grimace (deflection, how prosaic).

John sighs. “I know,” he says, and Sherlock can hear him shift his weight. “I was… really angry.”

Sherlock snorts. 

( _“You’re angry that I’m alive.”_ )

(John hadn’t denied it.)

“And I said some things,” John goes on, clearly trying to put a heightened amount of thought and effort into his words, his voice firm, plodding, “that I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh  _god_ ,” Sherlock groans, throwing his head back in exasperation. “ _Must_  we do this?” He spins on his heel, stalks over to the chest of drawers, contemplates a dozen different indices by which to organise his sock drawer. John doesn’t follow, but his head and eyes track Sherlock’s movement. “Your previous summation was correct,” he adds, decides that ordering the socks according to relative warmth is the most useful method. “You don’t  _owe_  me anything.”

“No, Sherlock,” John says, and Sherlock can tell he’s scrubbing a hand over his eyes, frustration clear in his voice. “That’s one of those things I shouldn’t have… I owe you my  _life_.”

“Yes, just as I owe you mine,” Sherlock returns, his tone growing snide, mocking, impatient, “many times over, and vice versa. I see little purpose in acting as though this one occurrence is somehow of greater significance than its fellows.”

He can see in his mind’s eye, without looking, the way that John purses his lips, the tip of his tongue barely visible, trapped between them. “It’s not,” John says after a long moment. “And it shouldn’t have ever made any difference, since, you know... We _have_. Saved each other. A lot. But I’m... ashamed to say that it did. For a while. When I thought that—”

“Is there a point you intend to reach at any time in the near future?” Sherlock asks abruptly, turning away from the socks to glare over at him.  

He can see the moment John makes his decision, shoring up his resolve, Captain Watson stepping to the fore, taking command (Sherlock’s own spine straightens in response, gooseflesh rising across his shoulders and down his arms). Words precise and purposeful, John asks without further preamble, “Were you with Moriarty for the months you were gone?”

 

( )

 

( )

 

( )

 

( )

 

( _Error._ )

He’s staring. He knows he’s staring. He can’t stop staring.

( _Error. Does not compute._ )

John holds his gaze, doesn’t elaborate.

“What?” Sherlock asks. He feels himself blink several times. Rapidly. Stupidly.

“Did you,” John says, slowly, deliberately (makes Sherlock want to tear his hair out, to grab John by the shoulders and  _shake_  him, to force time to move more quickly or else to pry John’s skull open and see whatever is going on inside his thoughts, because there is simply  _no rational way_  that he could _possibly_ think—), “fake your death so that you could go and,” he pauses, sucks in a deep breath that makes his chest heave under his jumper, but he pushes on, resolute, dependable, always, “and continue the… the  _game_ that Moriarty had been playing with you?”

There is no path of logic, no reason, no rationale that might explain this. “You think—” he starts, words coming quick and furious, but stalling ( _engine overheating, drivers failing_ ). “How can you—”

“Please,” John says, holding up one hand (his left; no visible tremors; stress, but the sort he thrives on). “Sherlock, please, just answer me. Yes or no?”

Sherlock feels himself snarling, feels as though he’s about to fly apart into a billion microscopic particles, subatomic fission simmering under his skin. “ _No!_ ”

And John— John seems to implode, collapsing inward on himself, whatever tension or willpower had been holding him upright suddenly abandoning him, leaving him to sag against the door at his back. He catches himself, stumbles over to the chair in the corner, falls there with his head tilted back, breaths coming in great, sloppy heaves. “God,” John gasps, and scrubs his hands over his face. “I mean, Jesus  _Christ_ , Sherlock.”

“There is no logical path by which you could have arrived at such a conclusion,” Sherlock informs him when John opens his eyes again (lips pulled back from his teeth, limbs taut, straining, adrenaline pumping into his blood stream (contrasting John’s sudden limpid relief), anger, _fury_ coursing through him).

John huffs a laugh (deep, from his belly; wrinkles around his eyes beginning to appear, consistent with the slight upward pull at the corners of his mouth). “Right, because it’s  _entirely_ illogical to think you might’ve got tired of being followed around by ordinary old John Watson when you could be off with someone who can actually keep up with you.”

“He was a madman,” Sherlock snarls. “A _maniac_. If I wanted a battle of wits all I’d need do is provoke Mycroft into a discussion of some petty philosophical issue.” His free hand is clenching and unclenching, his body thrumming with rage, frustration, with _how could John possibly think for a single second—_

“Mycroft never held your attention like that,” John says, and shakes his head.

“I was hunting them,” Sherlock seethes, pacing across the breadth of the room toward the window, spinning back around when he reaches the bedside table. “I was tearing Moriarty’s network to the ground, destroying every last _trace_ of him—” ( _Because you don’t get to threaten Sherlock Holmes’ loved ones and continue to walk the face of the earth_.)

(Terminology unknown: do not vocalise.)

“And how was I supposed to know any of that?” John asks, bracing his hands on his knees as he looks up at Sherlock. “I thought— God, I didn’t know _what_ to think, Sherlock. All I knew was that you were suddenly _not_ dead, which meant you’d faked your death for some unknown reason, and you’d let me _think_ — Christ, Sherlock, you let me think you were dead for a _year_ and a _half!_ ”

“Eight months,” Sherlock corrects him, words sharp, bitten out. He paces over to the chest of drawers again, turns, repeats. “And, if you bother to recall, I _did_ offer to explain.”

John takes a deep breath (calming, stabilising himself), lets it out. “I guess you did, yeah. But I was too angry to listen, too—”

“Wrapped up in your own idiotic assumptions to allow logic and reason to permeate the density of your delusions?” Sherlock suggests, still pacing. 

“Something like that,” John acquiesces, before his voice hardens once more. “And it was fifteen months, not eight, if _you_ recall.”

“The second of February, this year, almost exactly eight months from the time of my supposed suicide to when I decided to return to England,” Sherlock snaps, casting a glare down at John as he treads past. “It’s hardly my fault you left such an _inconvenient_ trail behind you that it took another seven months to search the whole of Britain for you.”

“Oh, right, how stupid of me,” John replies, frowning as sarcasm creeps into his tone. “Of course I should have known to leave better clues for my _dead flatmate_ to come find me.”

(Sherlock _almost_ snarls out that John hadn’t left him _any_ clues. Harry had written notes to the ex-wife she’d walked out on, but _John_ hadn’t even—)

John sighs, rubs a hand over his eyes again. “Sorry. I don’t want to fight with you. I just... wish I’d known all of this before.”

Sherlock stops, feels his eyes narrow as one of the puzzle pieces finally clicks into place. “Harry.”

John looks up at him from under his brows, not quite meeting his gaze.

“She didn’t tell you. When we talked before, when I asked if you’d spoken with her.”

“She thought you’d told me,” John says, shrugging, then shakes his head, frowns down at the floor (suddenly unwilling to establish or maintain eye contact; guilty about something regarding his conversation with Harry; such a sensitive moral compass). “I thought... Well. It doesn’t really matter. But she tried to tell me. It didn’t sink in until just now, with Anderson.”

Sherlock scowls, drops onto the end of the bed. “I refuse to believe that his idiocy was somehow the lens through which you finally managed to see the truth.”

John snorts, but he’s smiling again when he looks up. “That about covers it, actually.” He pauses, licks his lips, studies his hands for a moment. “Look... I know I’ve been a pretty big arsehole the last few weeks, and I don’t think we can pretend like this suddenly fixes everything, but... What do you say we try and start over?”

“I thought you didn’t want a return to the situation before,” Sherlock says, slanting a glance across at him.

John blows out a breath. “Yeah... So did I.” He shrugs, glances up. “I’ve got a slightly different perspective on things now.”

Sherlock frowns, looks away. “And what, precisely, would ‘starting over’ entail?” he asks. “I do hope you don’t intend to track down another serial killing cabbie all the way out here.”

John laughs, his face splitting with a sudden, authentic smile (something warm unfurls itself in the pit of Sherlock’s stomach). “I was thinking more along the lines of just not being such dicks to each other anymore,” he says, grinning over at Sherlock. “Or, you know, any more than we used to be.”

“And you’ll give up this ridiculous notion that I was off cavorting with a lunatic who on multiple occasions had tried to kill you?”

John nods, his eyes closing briefly (something suppressed in his expression, fatigue, pain, sadness? Unknown. Insufficient data). “Yeah, I’ll... Yeah.” He looks at Sherlock, then purses his lips, thinking, and after a moment, he says, “You know, you said something, before – about it being easier on me when I thought you were dead.” He doesn’t look up at Sherlock again, instead studying his hands clasped in front of him, elbows balanced on his knees. “You were right, in a way. It _was_ easier – when I thought you’d given up, that you’d done it because you couldn’t bear to live with what Moriarty had done. As... As _horrible_ as that was, it _was_ easier to think that than... than to have to face the possibility, when you came back, that you’d actually done it because you just couldn’t bear to live with _me_ anymore.” He shakes his head, his smile brittle as he looks down at his shoes. “I’m quite the narcissist, it turns out.”

Sherlock frowns down at his left hand, curled into a loose fist in his lap. “Disbelief and betrayal are relatively reasonable responses, given the circumstances.” His hand clenches tight and he feels his stomach turn, could swear he smells chlorine. ( _“Well, this is a turn-up..._ ”)

“Reasonable,” John echoes, and shakes his head. “Not exactly how I’d describe my behaviour. You, on the other hand... You put up with me all this time. And I honestly don’t know how you’ve managed to go this long without getting bored out of your mind.”

“I’ve kept myself occupied,” Sherlock murmurs, but he’s frowning to himself, something tugging at his thoughts, a falsehood that was stated and allowed to stand for far longer than is acceptable. Looking up, he says, voice firm, “John. You’re not boring.”

John blinks, his brows rising slightly in surprise. “Oh,” he says. Then, after a moment of thought, he repeats, softer, “ _Oh_.” John drops his gaze to the floor again, but Sherlock can see that he’s smiling slightly as he says, “Thank you.”

 


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Actions speak louder than words._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting late again, guys. It's been a rough week over here :P

“The second of February?” John asks, looking over at Sherlock again after a long moment of what has been – for the first time in a very, very long time – comfortable silence between them, maybe a little wary still but tension dispersed, assumptions and misunderstandings finally swept aside to let in the clear light of day.

Sherlock blows an indignant sigh out his nose, fingers plucking idly at the linen of his sling. “Mycroft was meant to be keeping an eye on you. He wasn’t doing a very good _job_ of it,” he adds sourly, “considering he allowed an undead attack to occur at your place of employment in the very earliest stages of the outbreak, when fully-fledged zombies were still extremely rare.”

“You— You knew about that?” John asks, and Sherlock’s eyes flick over to his face.

He gives a small half-shrug, looks away again. “Mycroft didn’t think it necessary to furnish me with the relevant intelligence reports.”

John licks his lips, watching Sherlock’s profile. “So... you were...?”

“I was monitoring the news out of Westminster,” Sherlock confirms, pale irises returning to pin John in place. After a moment, he pushes himself backward across the bed, settling with his back against the wall and his legs curled up around him – getting comfortable for a longer stay, and all without once dropping John’s gaze.

John watches him, couldn’t look away even if he’d wanted to. There’s something like a challenge in Sherlock’s expression, a barely-raised eyebrow, as if daring John to comment on the fact that he’d apparently been keeping tabs on him while he was away, that Sherlock had, perhaps, spent five out of every ten seconds scanning the faces around him for one in particular, one he would know anywhere, no matter how much time had passed or how far apart they might be – just as John had done every minute of every day since Sherlock jumped.

John tears his eyes away. Don’t read into it. That’s what Sherlock had told him, just a few minutes ago. Don’t try to read between the lines. Tracking the news doesn’t necessarily mean he’d been tracking John specifically. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’d been lonely, homesick.  It doesn’t mean he’d _missed_ John.

“Will you tell me,” John asks, clasping his hands in front of him, elbows on his knees, “what happened that day?” He looks up, and Sherlock is still watching him. “How you did it?”

“Molly,” he says simply. “The homeless network. A bin of laundry to break my fall.”

“Laundry?”

One corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches. “There might have been industry grade stunt mats underneath the laundry.”

John snorts, nods, feels himself smiling as well. Of course Sherlock would know how to get his hands on that sort of thing, would have meticulously calculated out where it needed to be placed on the pavement below, adjusting for wind and downward velocity and all manner of things that John can’t even imagine. And it would’ve had to be done in such a way that John wouldn’t have seen it from where he was stood across the street – there was a smaller building blocking his view, he remembers, and the crowd of people who’d held him back, the biker who’d knocked him down, the minutes he’d spent dazed and scrambling, preventing him from getting to Sherlock until the scene was properly set.

“All those people – yours?” he asks, and Sherlock nods.

“Given the proper monetary lubrication, most people will go along with any scheme, no questions asked. And then once I was inside and Molly took custody of the body, it was a simple matter of forging the paperwork and slipping out a back entrance.”

John studies his hands. “Molly was in on it the whole time, eh?” Of course she was. She’d performed the post-mortem. It was her signature on the death certificate. Sherlock was a good actor, but even he couldn’t hold still while someone started a y-incision down his chest.

“No one ever thinks of her,” Sherlock says. “Even Moriarty overlooked her. I knew I could trust her.”

John feels a sudden stab of pain at that, a flash of anger, and he has to bite his tongue, blinking furiously. He manages to wrestle his composure back into place, but just barely. “You put her in rather a bad spot,” he remarks, voice tight. “I think… I think she tried to tell me a few times, those first months.” She had, he realises. She’d always looked so sad whenever John saw her, so lost. Guilty, he recognises now. She’d held the key to undoing all of John’s grief, but it hadn’t been hers to give. “What else?” he asks, pauses to clear his throat. “When you sent me away, when you went up to the roof. You mentioned— negotiating? With Moriarty?”

Sherlock’s eyes are still on him when John finally looks up, gaze intense, laser-focused, expression unreadable. “John,” he starts. He seems to be searching John’s face for something. Then, softer, “He’s dead.”

John releases a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, feels another weight lift from his shoulders, another ballast stone falling away. Consulting criminals are hardly the most pressing of issues in this new world they live in, but the thought had been there ever since Sherlock’s reappearance, niggling at the back of John’s mind. He’d tried to ignore it, had tried to set it aside along with everything else that had been dredged up when Sherlock returned – but there were times when it snuck up on him, caught him unawares, times when he could suddenly _hear_ the odd pitch of the madman’s voice, playful, crooning in his ear, coming out John’s mouth. Sometimes it was exactly the words he’d spoken at the pool, merely reliving the events of that day, but sometimes it was more, the lilting Irish tones telling John exactly how he’d enticed Sherlock away, how no one as plain and ordinary as John could have ever held a candle to the allure of his dark genius, how John may as well give up because he’d already lost long before he’d even realised what they were battling for.

John would wake from those dreams and spend the next hours doing nothing but staring up at the pitch-dark ceiling of his room, refusing to walk down the stairs and stand outside Sherlock’s room, to listen for his breathing, reassure himself that he’s here, he’s real, yet too terrified to sleep anymore. All he was left with was hours of trying desperately not to wonder if he’d preferred Sherlock to call him Jim or Richard, if he was out there still waiting, knowing Sherlock would eventually grow bored with his second-best playmate once again, if their games had always been strictly cerebral or if they’d ever taken a detour into more carnal pursuits.

But it wasn’t real. It hadn’t happened like that. None of it. All the things John had thought, feared – nothing more than passing nightmares.

He clears his throat, sits up a little straighter in his chair. “How?” he asks, looking across at Sherlock again.

“Shot himself,” Sherlock replies evenly. “Put his own gun in his mouth.” His head is tilted slightly to one side, and John has to wonder how much of his last thoughts were written across his face, if Sherlock could read the wash of emotions there or if the motivations and sentiments underlying them were a mystery to him, ‘not his area.’ Frowning slightly, the detective goes on, “I was in a position to prove his Richard Brook act false. I could have forced him to confess. That was the point at which he informed me of the gunmen shadowing you, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade.” He looks away, wrinkling his nose in irritation. “Obviously I’d anticipated some sort of manoeuvre of that nature, and that the price he’d demand in exchange for letting you live would be my own downfall. But I’d thought—” Sherlock’s lip curls in a sneer, an expression that John is all too familiar with, the detective’s frustration and anger turning inward on himself for not seeing something that he’s decided should have been absolutely _obvious_. “I _had him_ , John!”he bites out. “I could have made him take it all back, made him order his snipers to stand down. But I didn’t for a _second_ expect him to sacrifice his _own_ life for the sake of his plot.”

Sherlock is silent a moment before drawing a long breath, anger settling into a sulk. “And then you arrived,” he concludes. “And I knew I was out of time.”

John purses his lips, feels his fingers digging into the backs of his hands, knuckles showing white. The memories are rising up around him like the tide, Sherlock’s voice broken by the static of their mobile phones, the sight of the wind whipping his coat around his legs as he stood silhouetted against the sky. “You said,” John tries, and has to work past the lump forming in his throat again, has to force the words out as he beats the memories back. “Before, you said that I wasn’t supposed to be there when you jumped.”

Sherlock sighs, tips his head back against the wall. “I did tell you to turn around and walk back the way you came when you got out of the cab,” he says. “But in the end... I didn’t want you to go. I wanted to see you.” He shrugs, lip curling again, doesn’t look at John. “A moment of weakness. Nothing more.”

John watches, watches Sherlock avoid his gaze, the pale face that John knows so well darkened now by anger and shame and what can only be called misery.

 _Don’t read into it,_ John reminds himself, and says gently, “There’s nothing weak about wanting to see a friendly face at a time like that – especially when you’re about to do something that insane.” He sees Sherlock peek over at him, his expression wary and distrustful. John tries to smile at him encouragingly. “Stepping off the roof of a tall building has got to be scary as all hell, no matter how well you may have planned it out.”

Sherlock looks away again. “I never had any doubt that my calculations were correct,” he says carelessly, but his demeanour has relaxed back into his default cool hauteur, whatever fear of judgement he’d been holding onto apparently assuaged by John’s words.

And John knows he’s probably saying too much, probably showing his hand now, but he can’t stop himself from adding in a low murmur, “I wouldn’t have left even if you’d asked me.”

Sherlock’s eyes flick back to his, wide and almost scared, that unreadable, unfathomable look on his face once more.

John smiles, licks his lips. “I have to ask,” he says, looking back down at his hands. “Fifteen months – or eight, whatever – and only because of the zombie outbreak.”

He can feel Sherlock’s frown without looking up at him, can sense the way that his eyes narrow and his head tilts – question unvoiced, trying to read the answer in John’s face, his hands, in the folds of his clothing, deduce it before John can say it out loud.

“How long would you have stayed away?” John asks, and makes himself glance up. “If nothing had happened to— If the plague hadn’t happened. How long?”

Sherlock is indeed frowning at him. “As long as it took,” he replies after a long moment.

John nods, looks down again. “It just doesn’t really seem like the sort of thing that has a definite end date, taking down Moriarty’s network,” he says, and smiles grimly. “I should know – I invaded Afghanistan, remember?”

Sherlock is silent for another few seconds, and then he says, “Sebastian Moran. Ever heard of him?” When John shakes his head, he goes on, “He is Moriarty’s second in command, his most loyal lieutenant. So loyal, in fact, that he is still fully committed to carrying out his master’s dying threat.” He looks away, turning his head to study the chest of drawers off to his right, sounding almost bored as he lists off the facts. “He’s ex-military, like you. Wanted internationally for I believe multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. From what I understand, his marksmanship could feasibly out-perform your own, and he was personally assigned by Moriarty to shadow you, to kill you unless he witnessed my suicide.” Sherlock takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “ _He_ was the end goal. Everything else was just the pathway leading to him.”

“Someone like that,” John says, “could take years to track down.” _Decades_ , he thinks. A lifetime.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathes. He’s staring at the chest of drawers, unblinking, clearly seeing something else entirely. “Especially considering that my involvement would need to be kept absolutely confidential. One hint that I was alive, and he’d have come after you, regardless of the passage of time.”

“So,” John says slowly, and looks down at his hands clenched together, feels as though he’s blindly grasping around the edges of a thought, “you were going to go off looking for this Moran character, on your own, for however many years it might take.”

“Yes,” Sherlock answers slowly. He sounds wary, cautious, a note of query in his tone.

“And you were tracking the news out of London, out of Westminster specifically. You were keeping tabs on me.”

Sherlock’s eyes have narrowed on him, outright suspicious now, suspicious and impatient. “Why is this making you angry?” he asks, cocking his head further sideways.

And John realises with a start that he _is_ angry. “Because I would have gone with you!” he exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. “In a _heartbeat!_ We could have got him together! But instead _your_ master plan was to let me go on thinking you were _dead_ for— I don’t even know. How long, Sherlock? Forever? God, if you’d just _told me_ what was going _on_ —”

“And approximately how long do you expect you’d have survived after gaining that knowledge?” Sherlock asks, his voice sharp, condescending.

It takes John a second to get it, to work past his flash of temper and _think_. “The... The assassins,” he says at last, still scowling.

Sherlock smiles at him mockingly. “Our nice new neighbours on Baker Street,” he confirms, “each of them instructed by Moriarty that I was in possession of a secret worth more than they could possibly imagine, each of them entirely prepared to kill anyone in whom I might have confided that secret. It would hardly have been out of character for him to make _you_ their next target simply as a punishment for me breaking his _rules_.”

John shakes his head. “There must have been some way... With Mycroft’s help—”

“What does it _matter?!_ ” Sherlock demands, snarling, clearly nearing the limits of his frustration. “It _happened_ , and now it’s _over_. Why must you question every facet of every detail of _every single step_ in the process that led us here?! What is the _point_ of continuing to be upset about this?”

“The _point_ ,” John all but yells back at him, “is that you _did that_ to me! I _watched_ you _die_ , Sherlock! You let me _think_ —”

“I built the smoke diffuser!” Sherlock cries, and the abrupt non-sequitur brings John up short, steals whatever words had been forming right out of his mouth. “I mean – I had Kal build it, but I _designed_ it.”

John frowns at him, blinking stupidly, feels like he’s got whiplash from the sudden change in topic. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m building a generator next,” Sherlock ploughs on, words coming in a rush, a trace of a whine creeping into his voice. “A water turbine, powered by the spring. I didn’t want to show you until it was completed, until I could prove that it was operational, but it _will_ be, it will _work_ —”

“Sherlock—”

Sherlock slams his left hand and both feet down onto the bedspread under him, the very image of a toddler in the throes of a tantrum. “ _Why are you still angry?!_ ”

John can only stare at him, his mind scrabbling helplessly, trying desperately to find the connection between the two thoughts.

 _You’re angry that I’m alive_ , Sherlock had accused him when they’d fought weeks ago. But he’s not, he wasn’t, not really, he could never feel anything but boundless, searing joy, awe, in the face of Sherlock’s return. It’s just that—

 _You did all of this to impress your little pet doctor,_ Anderson’s voice sneers in his head next, but John doesn’t see what the smoke diffuser or any of the rest of it has to do with _him_ – except that Sherlock had looked so terrified when John had found him up on the roof earlier, had rushed to try to explain that it wasn’t an experiment.

And, suddenly, it clicks.

No experiments, John had told him. No random destruction.

So instead, Sherlock is designing and building what can only be called renovations, additions to the castle that will dramatically improve their standard of living here.

No picking fights, no deducing people’s secrets out loud in front of everyone.

John’s heard nothing but silence and polite conversation between Sherlock and the others in the castle, a near literal enactment of the adage ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ For _weeks_.

And, lastly – he almost has to laugh when he realises it, because it’s _so_ ridiculous, such a tiny thing, it’s so _Sherlock_ – the one issue that they had always fought over back at Baker Street, that had always managed to irritate John, without fail, no matter what else had been going on: Sherlock’s often unhealthy lack of appetite.

Now, there are plates of food practically licked clean. Emptied tea mugs you could set your watch by. Three square meals a day.

Another old proverb: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’

It’s all an apology. All of it. For John.

John is still staring at him, and Sherlock is staring right back, his face flushed pink and twisted with rage and confusion and – just maybe – _fear_.

“Oh, Sherlock,” John breathes, and Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, turns his face away – at first looking like a petulant child refusing to listen, but then the image changes, shifts: a dog waiting to be hit. John swallows thickly, finds his mouth is suddenly dry.

“Sherlock— Look at me, please.” He tries to keep his tone gentle, patient. “I’m not angry,” John says, and Sherlock still refuses to look at him. “I’m not angry at you,” John amends. Sherlock’s eyes slit open, looking at John askance. John smiles in what he hopes is an encouraging manner. “Look,” he says, “I know emotions aren’t your strong suit – and that’s _fine_ – just, let me explain.” He takes a deep breath, trying to order his thoughts, to organise the messy jumble into something logical enough for Sherlock to follow, to divorce himself from his still-churning emotions and examine them calmly, analytically.

“You’re right,” John decides to lead with, and is rewarded with a look of cautious intrigue from Sherlock, “it happened, it’s over, there’s not much point in being angry about it now. But,” he licks his lips, searches for an appropriate analogy, “sometimes, it’s a bit like breaking a bone.” Sherlock’s eyes narrow, but in the way that says he’s working through John’s logic, his razor-sharp mind already leaping ahead, and John knows he’s got him. “Whatever caused the break is over and done with, but—”

“It takes time to heal,” Sherlock finishes for him, his deep voice rumbling out in the quiet of the room.

“Exactly,” John nods. He resists the urge to look down at his hands again, to hide away from the intensity of Sherlock’s gaze, unwilling to break eye contact for fear of Sherlock withdrawing again. “I’m not angry at you,” John repeats softly, “not really. Even though... I might _feel_ like I am, for a while. But I’ll get past it,” he says, smiling tentatively. “We’ll get back to normal. I promise.”

Sherlock purses his lips, drops his eyes to study his knees. After a moment, he says quietly, “All right.”

John beams at him. 

 


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John is radiant, happy, quietly effulgent. A star resting at the centre of Sherlock’s solar system._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I can apologize enough, guys. This chapter needed some major rewrites at the last minute, and I owe all the thanks in the world to GlassCannon for all her hand-holding and thoughtful editing, and to Madame_Mary, who continues to put up with my lateness in addition to the transatlantic time differences.

John sits next to Sherlock at dinner that evening. He has to stand guard on the wall for the first night shift, so he eats quickly, neither of them speaking, but Sherlock spies him glancing over a multitude of times, feels John’s right shoulder brush Sherlock’s left every few seconds. He’s back at Sherlock’s side the next morning, meeting Sherlock’s gaze with a warm (cautious) smile as he settles into the next seat over and tucks into his breakfast (could have rationalised a lie in to make up for lost sleep after last night’s guard duty, but chose to come down to breakfast anyway).

John makes casual conversation (asking how Sherlock slept, _if_ he slept (smiling conspiratorially (affectionately?), as if Sherlock’s past habits are an endearing quality, a shared joke between them)), then not-so-casual conversation (any fluctuation in his pain levels, alcohol consumption, range of motion?), goes so far as to suggest that Sherlock might start using his dominant hand for small tasks soon, might start working towards regaining the independence that having both hands operational will provide.

“Nothing strenuous,” John amends quickly when Sherlock casts a sharp glance over at him. “Just eating, maybe some writing. Just to rebuild the fine motor skills.”

Sherlock nods, looks back at his half-eaten food, and John adds, “Of course we’ll want to continue with the physiotherapy for the larger muscle groups as well.”

Sherlock’s eyes find John’s face again (John’s hands firm on his arm, his back, fingertips warm against Sherlock’s bare skin, guiding the damaged limb through slow extensions and rotations, always so gentle, careful, caring, even when he was angry, even when he didn’t  _know_ —) and John smiles at him, crow’s feet sprouting around his eyes.

Sherlock doesn’t allow himself to stare at John’s smile (doesn’t feel warmth spread across his cheekbones, the back of his neck, doesn’t feel relief unfold in his chest (not his to keep, but not something he’s willing to give up just yet. (So selfish, Mycroft’s voice sighs, so foolish))).

John is radiant, happy, quietly effulgent. A star resting at the centre of Sherlock’s solar system (knowledge once thought useless, now reclaimed, simply needed the right context, needed John). There are times, though, when John’s smile will dim, when he doesn’t quite look at Sherlock (a cloud in front of the sun, cold grey drizzle raining down, muting everything it touches), and still other times when it seems he _can’t_ look at Sherlock, when his teeth clench and his hands ball into fists and Sherlock feels a prickle of primitive fear along his spine (an eclipse, ring of fiery vengeance around a deep black core).

John doesn’t look at Sherlock in these moments, doesn’t speak to him. Claims it’s better (doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t specify for whom this silence is beneficial, or how, or for how long it must last). Sherlock doesn’t press the issue, doesn’t vocalise his own frustration, doesn’t _pick fights_. He works on his plans, adds details to the blueprints in his notebook with vicious exactitude. Waits for John to come back. Reminds himself that he is not the only one recovering from a traumatic injury. Tries to be patient.

(Patience has never been a virtue that Sherlock particularly embraced.)

He finds he must, though, must be patient, that he can and will (it’s always a matter of will, of willpower – he clawed his way out of a six year cocaine addiction, out from under his family’s easy trappings of money and influence, cut a path across the globe with the undead snapping at his heels – he can _do this_ ) endure the dark, cold times when John is absent, either physically or mentally. John still stands guard, still inspects the fortifications daily, treats minor injuries, prescribes additional vitamin supplements when members of their population begin to cough and sniffle. Sometimes he leaves on raids to scavenge for supplies, and sometimes he’s gone for an entire day, from dawn to dusk, and those days are always cold, sunless, an unending night. Sherlock finds himself pacing, pulling at his hair, too distracted to do more than simply flex his right hand, roll his shoulder agitatedly, his plans and blueprints forgotten until John steps back inside the safety of the castle walls.

When John returns, he always comes to check on Sherlock, even if it’s past time when most of the castle’s inhabitants have retired to their beds for the evening. He’ll perform a thorough examination of Sherlock’s wound (hands scrubbed clean and so steady, so sure), quietly ask about any progress made that day, if Sherlock’s pain levels or endurance have seen any changes. And then he’ll bid Sherlock good night (blue eyes soft, lingering on Sherlock’s face; warm, rough fingers lingering against his skin; a single word bubbling up from beneath Sherlock’s sternum ( _stay_ ), never allowed to escape ( _stay, don’t go_ ); a smile that is tight, worn, tired, that doesn’t make the skin around John’s eyes crinkle) and finally retreat to his own bedroom.

Sherlock never wishes to sleep after John has left, but alcohol is a depressant and his body is still so very demanding, overruling his mind with its need to heal itself. When he slumbers, he dreams of black holes, of stars burning brighter and brighter until they collapse into themselves at last, leaving only empty ruin in their wake.

Harry is no help at all (as if he could have expected any different), constantly feeling the need to insinuate herself into their conversations, sprinkling comments like poison rain, saying, “I’m just happy to see you two lovebirds back together at last,” and, “Glad you berks finally figured out how to actually _talk_ to each other.”

John never hesitates to tell her to sod off, his voice light, casual, easy – but he’ll not do more than glance furtively in Sherlock’s direction for an average of four minutes after she’s gone (clouds, sunshine obscured, crepuscular rays waning). But always, the moment passes, and John eventually smiles again, the tightness about his eyes and mouth smoothing away, allowing Sherlock to feel the sun’s warmth on his skin once more.

Sherlock finds himself basking in those times, setting aside logic and science and inevitability, wishing, willing himself, to ignore the patterns, ignore what he knows of John’s past behaviour and what conclusion these signs all point toward.

(He’s ahead of schedule. A supernova burning itself out too quickly.)

(Damn you, Anderson. Damn you, Harry.)

He will endure the clouds, the cold drizzle, the bursts of fire, will allow them to last as long as they will, as long as John needs them to, so that, in exchange, Sherlock can perhaps lengthen these moments of warmth, the times when John looks at him and smiles, when his palms rest solid and strong against Sherlock’s back, when Sherlock thinks he can see the entire solar system, all of it encompassed in the creases on John’s face, the gold of his hair, the dance of his laughter.

He tries not to see the black hole waiting on the other side of it, the end that they are already racing toward.

 


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This really does feel like starting over, like a replay, a second go at their first days and weeks together._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting almost-on-time today, wooooo~ Here, have a nice long chapter, and now, I need a fucking nap, oi...

They test the smoke diffuser in the dying light of sunset, the sky painted orange and red in the west, casting their shadows in long columns of darkness across the courtyard as most of the castle’s inhabitants stand outside to watch while Winston and Caleb work to stoke the fire to a healthy blaze. Never mind that the contraption has technically been operational for weeks – Sherlock insists that those had only been preliminary runs, irrelevant until the whole of the pipe system was connected up to the chimney today. They’ve so far continued to wait ‘til after dark before risking any light sources, when their thick curtains over the doors and windows would hide them from the undead and the night sky would mask the smoke from their fires.

Now, John can barely make out a dim haze beginning to form in the air above the castle’s roof, like the heat of a far-off mirage. The effect starts nearest the original chimney opening and then gradually spreads outward, the smoke following the many branching pipes and tubes on their scaffolding to filter out in tiny wisps and puffs that drift away on the breeze, rendered invisible nearly as soon as they appear.

There’s scattered applause from the group in the courtyard, and Caleb comes running outside a moment later, letting out a hearty whoop when he gets a look up at the roof.

“Well done,” Abigail says, clapping a wizened hand on Kal’s shoulder, then looks over toward Sherlock, flipping her long grey braid back over her shoulder, still smiling, and adds, “both of you.”

Beside John, Sherlock is staring hard up at the roof, his left hand rubbing absently at his right arm – free of its sling, as he’s been capable of doing more and more in the last few weeks as his shoulder heals and the muscles regain their strength. He barely acknowledges Abigail or the hail of compliments that follow hers, glancing around at the smiling faces with a look of confusion, maybe even irritation, before turning his gaze back to the pipes spreading like antlers from the castle’s peak.

John watches him out of the corner of his eye, allows himself to drink in, just for a few quiet seconds, the sight of Sherlock’s face in the evening light, shadows cutting stark lines about his nose and cheekbones, curls tinged with ruby fire, eyes rendered somehow green by the sky behind him.

Those eyes dart down to meet John’s for just a quick glance, wide and wild and, if John’s not mistaken, absolutely brimming with the need for approval. Sherlock looks away again a moment later, his face composed in a mask of stoic confidence, but, like an artist displaying his work for the first time or a student standing for an oral examination, he’s given away by the nervous fidgeting of his hands and the intent, critical stare he casts towards his creation.

John feels a sudden urge to reach out and touch, to lay a soothing hand on Sherlock’s back or elbow, his waist, but— Well. That probably wouldn’t be appropriate. It’s one thing when he’s acting as a doctor, inspecting and caring for his patient, but, as just a friend… Sherlock made his opinion of ‘romantic gestures’ perfectly clear after Anderson’s bumbling accusations weeks ago, and John has no desire to tread where he’s not wanted.

He settles for shifting his weight, leaning just that bit closer to murmur, “Amazing.”

Sherlock’s breath catches, and the pale irises flick down to John’s face once more.

“Absolutely amazing.” John smiles up at him, feels warmth suffusing his body from his head to his toes. He nods toward their companions before looking back up at the detective. “And that _is_ what most people are saying, this time.”

Sherlock snorts, turning away, but he makes no effort to smother his triumphant smirk, and John thinks he sees a reddish tinge to his pale cheeks – but it must be a trick of the setting sun.

~*~

John is struck at times by how much this really does feel like starting over, like a replay, a second go at their first days and weeks together.

Coming down to breakfast in the morning – or stumbling in from a guard shift, returning from a successful raid – and finding Sherlock here, waiting for him, every day, quicksilver eyes jumping up to meet John’s, reading him, flowing over him – it feels like nothing short of a miracle. It feels like being questioned about his history as an army doctor, if he’s any good, if he’s seen a lot of trouble in his time, if he’d like to see some more.

He hadn’t been quite prepared, then, for the vitriol and spite that seemed to follow Sherlock, the way Donovan and Anderson and all manner of other police personnel had reacted to him, not when John had still been spinning, awed, amazed by Sherlock’s deductions, his quick wit and sharp shark’s smile. Now, at least, the wider consensus in the castle seems to have warmed toward the detective, most of their companions recognising Sherlock’s intelligence and understanding that, while he’s perhaps not exactly what might be called ‘normal,’ he’s also mostly harmless – or at least that he has little desire to cause harm.

And, strangely enough, more often than not these days, Sherlock’s macabre and bitingly dark sense of humour doesn’t seem to be getting him into trouble. It’s not as if he’s tempered his personality at all, John can attest, not like he’s tried to make himself more palatable for the general populace. He’s taken to reading some enormous textbook about public executions right out in the open, for god’s sake, frequently with one or both of the children looking over his shoulder at the grisly illustrations, offering chattering commentary in his ear or asking questions that he answers in a low voice without looking up from the page. Occasionally, Emily or Mary will pause, blinking wide eyes at some offhand comment Sherlock’s made about the rate of decay in human tissue if left exposed to the elements – but then they’ll merely continue on their way, either visibly trying not to break out in giggles, in the former’s case, or looking a bit green about the gills but trying to be polite about it, for the latter.

John’s not exactly sure how it happened, but somehow, living through a zombie apocalypse has apparently made most in their midst immune to gallows humour. It has, for perhaps the first time in Sherlock’s life, put everyone around him on an equal playing field with him, if not intellectually then at least socially. It’s allowed them to see past his rather unusual way of looking at the world and begin to appreciate the rest of his personality, behind the veneer of _high functioning sociopath_ – sharp wit, lightning-fast understanding, indomitable determination to solve any problem set before him, and even, on rare occasions, the odd show of emotion, of conscious consideration for those around him, the caring side that he keeps so carefully locked away, banished for its crime of sentimentality.

It’s not something John had ever expected to see, Sherlock coexisting so easily, so peaceably, with so many people, though it was certainly something he’d wanted, had wished for on more than one occasion. And not just that – while there had been moments of weakness, times when things would have been easier, gone smoother, if Sherlock could just _deign_ to observe some _small_ amount of social decorum – despite those times, John had never wanted to change him, not really. He hadn’t wanted to see Sherlock getting along with others at the expense of his mind, his personality, himself. 

What John had wanted, what he’d dared to dream of but never dared breathe aloud is exactly this: Sherlock, himself to the core, in his element, and everyone else beginning to recognise the splendour of that, beginning to see what John sees, what John has seen since that first evening when Sherlock had read his life-story in his haircut and his tan lines, in his mobile phone, when Sherlock had seen exactly what bit of the battered army doctor in front of him had been broken, and instead of walking away he’d reached out, just so, and _fixed him_.

Not that Sherlock is without his... idiosyncrasies. But John had known about those going in. He’d been warned.

 _“Flatmates should know the worst about each other,”_ as Sherlock had said.

But – well. Violin playing and bouts of silence were hardly any of Sherlock’s _worst_ or most disturbing habits. Human body parts stored next to the leftover takeaway, absolutely no understanding of personal property or privacy, a tendency to dance about gleefully when someone’s been murdered and to shoot holes in the wall when someone hasn’t. These are the types of things you generally want to know about before moving in with a bloke.

But John had been so besotted, right from the beginning, long before he’d ever thought of putting a name to it, that he’d never once seriously considered moving out, even back then, even when Sherlock was every day bringing home a new and more horrifying surprise – which, actually, if he’s honest, never really stopped happening, but at some point John stopped being startled by it. It was odd and mad and at times incredibly unhygienic, but it was their life.

And he wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

 _Not that I had a choice in the matter,_ John thinks before he can stop himself, and the anger sweeps over him like wildfire, catching him by surprise, scorching a path through him and reopening wounds that have finally begun to heal, all the grief he’d had to endure, the _unfairness_ of it, and all for _nothing_ —

No. Not for nothing.

John sucks in a great lungful of air, beats back the flames, smothers them, stamps them into cinders. It was for his life, not nothing, it was to save John’s _life_.

 _Our life_ , he reminds himself, and takes another deep, slow, calming breath. You can’t share your life with someone if you’re dead. Sherlock was saving John’s life. Both of their lives. Their life together.

He scrubs a hand over his eyes, shakes his head. Their life. Together. Sherlock’s back, and they’re together. Together again. Just like before. And it’s fine. They’re fine.

They are _going to be_ fine. John’s no fool – he knows how difficult this will be, how much more difficult they’ve made it by spending so much time hurting and being angry at each other—

How difficult _John_ has made it. Himself, on his own. He was the one refusing to listen, clinging to assumptions based on nothing but his own insecurities. And being able to fully admit that, he thinks, is probably the first step toward rectifying it.

Sherlock’s continued to keep himself on a fairly tight leash too, on his best behaviour, and now that he’s realised it, John can’t help seeing the apologetic lines in nearly everything Sherlock does. He’s still eating well, putting on weight, regaining his strength, but John knows him well enough to know that his own physical well-being is hardly a motivating factor in any of the detective’s decisions. John’s not had to nag him about a single meal or vitamin supplement, or even about sleep, really, though he suspects that has more to do with the large quantities of alcohol Sherlock’s still consuming every day, along with the bone-deep exhaustion that goes right in hand when dealing with severe pain on a long-term basis.

John can tell that he’s starting to slip, though, the stress beginning to show, delicate fissures appearing around Sherlock’s edges. The boredom of sitting in one place with nothing new, nothing exciting, is eating away at him, eroding his control and his temper. His interactions with the people around him are gradually growing more waspish, impatient, acidic. Honestly, John thinks they’re rather fortunate to have Anderson around now – without the ex-forensics specialist to draw so much of Sherlock’s ire, the rest of the castle’s inhabitants would be taking quite a bit more abuse on a daily basis. It was just yesterday that John had come inside for lunch to find Sherlock making an earnest effort to convince Damien that he needn’t remain within the safety of the castle walls, since zombies classically only seek prey who are in possession of a brain.

The day before that, Sherlock had been giving Sasha a detailed lesson on an entirely fictional but apparently debilitating neural disease – using Anderson as their case study, of course – complete with a fabricated history of the illness’s discovery and the progression of research that had, thus far, shown it to be utterly incurable.

John doesn’t know whether to laugh, join in, or scold him, but most days he settles for an even combination of the three.

Sherlock isn’t built to be contained, John knows, locked up in a cage of earth and stone, the outside world within view but beyond his reach. This building might be large as compared to their little flat on Baker Street, but it’s nothing to the sprawl of London, all of its twisting streets and darkened alleys, jutting roofs and balconies, every inch of it from the skyline to the underground Sherlock’s kingdom to roam at his will, its denizens his unwitting subjects, set to cower at the feet of his great mind without even knowing what hit them.

They’re doing their best to keep him distracted here, of course. Sherlock’s completely filled the spiral notebook Harry had given him, and John made sure to scrounge up several more the last few times they’d gone out for supplies, along with a handful of additional pens and pencils, in the hopes that writing, or drawing, or crafting blueprints, or whatever it was Sherlock filled all those pages with, will help to stave off the boredom for just a little longer. It took some begging and bartering, but John’s also managed to get Mary and Winston to agree to let Sherlock peruse the rest of the small collection of thick academic texts they’d brought with them from their university offices, and John’s kept an eye out for anything that might possibly hold the detective’s interest whenever he’s outside of the castle walls, but without much luck so far.

What he’d really love to do, John thinks, is find a way inside any one of the abandoned police stations in the many towns they’ve raided, haul boxes full of their unsolved cases back with them and let Sherlock tear through those like the Times crossword – but more often than not, like hospitals, churches, and anywhere else people had flocked to seek shelter and protection from the plague, the stations are now overrun with the undead, their hallways and offices clogged with the stumbling corpses, waiting in abject squalor for some unsuspecting sack of meat to wander inside and become their next meal.

The next best thing after a case, of course, is to give Sherlock a project to work on, an experiment. Nothing explosive, nothing incendiary, just something he can take apart and fiddle with and put back together in new and ever more astounding configurations. A project that might even result in something useful at the end of the day – like electricity.

That was the idea, anyhow.

“How am I meant to build _anything_ – much less an operational micro hydroelectric system – when you lot can’t even seem to tell _copper wiring_ from a flathead _screwdriver?!_ ” Sherlock rails, throwing his hands up and shoving away from the box on the table. It’s full of bits and pieces collected from a DIY shop and brought back by the most recent raiding party.

John doesn’t miss the way he winces afterward, the wild gesticulation wrenching at his shoulder. “Careful,” he admonishes from his seat beside the detective, voice stern.

Sherlock shoots him a glare before turning back to Harry, who’s scowling up at him from the other side of the table. “I wrote out an _incredibly detailed_ list,” he snarls at her. “In fact, I’ve written _three_ lists, each intended to be more foolproof than the last, and yet, somehow, every time any one of you sets foot outside these walls, you manage to disappoint my already _vastly_ lowered expectations!”

“You want to talk about lowered expectations?!” Harry responds, planting a hand on the tabletop while the other points down at the box between them. “We’ve brought you all kinds of tools and electronic gadgetry, but _you_ apparently just can’t figure out anything to make with them! Some Tony Stark you are!”

If anything, Sherlock’s scowl only deepens at the pop culture reference that sails right over his head. “You’ve brought me _refuse!_ Detritus you could have only scraped out of the bottom of the _dust bins_ that have likely been lying about on the kerb since before the shop owner was _eaten_ by his _customers!_ ”

“All right now,” John tries to intercede, holding up a hand.

“I would’ve thought _you_ of all people would know your way about an _ironmonger_ ,” Sherlock snipes, unwilling to let anyone else have the last word, even John.

Harry blinks, her brows shooting up towards her hairline. “Really, you dick? You’re going to go with the most obvious lesbian joke of all time?” She shakes her head, rummaging in her pockets until she at last retrieves a folded slip of lined paper – the list of supplies Sherlock had sent with them. “Well, you know what they say about DIY shops,” she says, viciously balling the paper up in her hands, “do – it – your – _self!_ ”

The wad of paper hits Sherlock squarely between the eyes, bouncing off his forehead. John’s not sure he’s ever seen Sherlock’s face turn quite that colour, not even when Anderson’s being his most idiotic or Mycroft his most irritating. The detective opens his mouth to snarl back at Harry – and then he freezes.

And good god in heaven, John knows _that_ look.

 


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock is thrumming, bouncing on the balls of his feet, energy flooding him unlike he’s felt in weeks, a month or more, fuse lit and he is once again a burning rocket, set for take-off, for orbit, for **escape.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! This chapter follows right on the heels of the last one, right after the, er, _talk_ Harry and Sherlock were having...
> 
> Oh and if you haven't yet, go check out the wonderful Catonspeed, who has made a book cover for this fic! It's so gorgeous, I can't stop staring at it *____*
> 
> Book cover here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/768531

“I didn’t really mean—” Harry says, but no one is listening to her.

“No, it’s perfect!” Sherlock exults, and he knows she and John are both right on his heels as he dashes outside to the cars parked end-to-end just inside the gate.

“Sherlock,” John tries (tone cajoling, gentle – trying to dissuade him – ha!)

“You keep notes about the towns you visit,” Sherlock muses aloud, rummaging in the glove compartment of the first car for the map. Yes, here: the castle’s location circled in red, an improvised legend drawn in the upper corner of the map, symbols and ratings, a scale of one to ten, indicating everything from levels of undead activity to how well-stocked they’d found the supermarket, as well as a list of dates of when each was selected for a trip (so thorough, John, wonderful!) “But nothing about the state of the ironmongers – never mind, irrelevant, any town with a decent sized DIY shop should have what I need.” He scans the map, weighing distance and zombie presence and (previous) population estimates, determines three likely destinations, none of which their raiding parties appear to have frequented in the last month.

John and Harry exchange a look, visible from the corner of his eye. John steps closer, one hand out (reaching, pausing, pulling back, falling). “Look, Sherlock… You’re still healing. This sort of thing is dangerous enough as it is with everyone in top form…”

Sherlock looks at him (it’s not as if he needs John’s approval, much less his _permission_ , but— Sherlock is thrumming, bouncing on the balls of his feet, energy flooding him unlike he’s felt in weeks, a month or more, fuse lit and he is once again a burning rocket, set for take-off, for orbit, for _escape_ ).

John watches him for a moment (thrumming, bouncing, _alive_ , _come on, John!_ ) and then he shakes his head with a sigh. “All right,” he says, and scrubs a hand over his face, pushes it back through his hair. “All right, but if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it  _right._ ”

Sherlock discovers precisely what John means by that when he arrives in the great hall early the next morning with not only his Browning in its usual place at his hip but also a second small arm, complete with a full clip of ammunition ready to be inserted.

“You’re going to give _him_ a gun,” Harry says, turning incredulous eyes on John.

“They gave _you_ one,” Sherlock snaps back at her, holding his hand out for the weapon (Sig Sauer, British Army issue, phased into use only shortly before John was invalided out of service; this piece was acquired after the plague was in full swing, after the ban on firearms was lifted; John still prefers the Browning, prefers his habits, the old, traditional ways of doing things).

Harry folds her arms. “I suppose we’re going to start arming Zach and Sasha now too?”

“I am not a  _child_ ,” Sherlock snarls.

“Could’ve fooled me!”

“ _All right_ , girls, you’re both pretty,” John cuts them off, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger (tired, annoyed, but a thin layer of amusement lingering about his eyes, the corners of his mouth). Fingers still wrapped firmly around the Sig, John turns to look up at Sherlock. “Have you had anything to drink today?” he asks, tone careful, clinical.

“Tea,” Sherlock answers, impatient, reaches for the handgun.

John frowns, pulls the weapon back against his chest. “Anything _in_ the tea?”

Sherlock huffs indignantly. “A spoon of sugar and a splash of milk. Is that _acceptable_ , doctor?”

John scowls (doesn’t appreciate Sherlock’s glib tone, apparently). “I meant what I said yesterday, Sherlock, you’re going to need your wits about you today,” he says, voice stern. “And we don’t know how long this might take – most of the day, easily. Do you think you can go that long without anything more than paracetamol for your pain?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, heaves a long-suffering sigh. “ _Yes_ , it’s fine.” (Are they _ever_ going to actually _leave?_ )

John takes a breath, still frowning, but finally nods and starts to extend his arm, holding the Sig out. When Sherlock moves to reach for it, though, John pulls back slightly, saying, “Ah – listen: this is for emergencies  _only_ , Sherlock. Understand?”

“ _Obviously_ , John,” he growls. (Does it _always_ take this long to prepare for a raid? How do they accomplish anything?!) “It’s not as if I plan on wasting bullets on inanimate targets.” (Or on _animate_ targets, really – they are not going deer hunting – all targets will be of the _reanimated_ variety.)

“No,” John says, and keeps his hand tight around the weapon, doesn’t allow Sherlock to pull it out of his grasp. “I mean  _moving_  targets too, Sherlock. You let me and Harry take care of any danger we run into first. The recoil from a gun like this could injure your shoulder all over again, possibly even cause a partial dislocation, worst case scenario. This is just a precaution, just in case something goes really wrong.”

“Harry and me,” Sherlock mutters, scowling ( _not_  sulking) off in the vicinity of John’s left ear.

“Are you  _listening_  to me?!”

He glares at John’s ear for a moment, then dutifully repeats, “It’s for emergencies only. I  _understand_ , John.”

“Good,” John nods, relinquishing the handgun at last, then adds, pointing a stern finger at him, “And no wandering off, either. No disappearing into buildings or back rooms by yourself.” Sherlock tries not to look too put out at how _boring_ this trip is beginning to sound, but John raises his eyebrows and gives him a hard look. “I mean it, Sherlock. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

And that— When put in those terms, it doesn’t sound quite so bad. Exploring (escaping from this grey, dull building, every inch of it discovered and memorised already, walls and ceilings and floors, all pressing inward, squeezing, suffocating) will be fun, and exploring _with John_  can only be that much more entertaining. (Wouldn’t have necessarily thought so, before, but the months spent turning to his side with a joke or a clever observation on the tip of his tongue only to be reminded that he was on his own, utterly alone in his mission, have convinced him otherwise.)

“Fine,” Sherlock says, and John nods again, gives him a small (warm), approving (sunshine, breaking through cloud cover) smile.

“Are we about ready to go, then?” a new voice asks, and both Sherlock and Harry look around to see Emily approaching their small gathering (rifle slung over one shoulder, dark hair secured in a simple plait, Sasha nowhere in sight, likely left with Kal for the day; Harry’s eyes unusually wide, stance awkward, stiff, startled, didn’t know Emily was accompanying them; John relaxed, unfazed, unsurprised by her appearance: asked her along (moment of panic: possible adjustments required for Stage Three of his plans? No, no, it’s too _early_ – will examine at a later time)).

“I think so,” John answers her, handing the clip of ammunition off to Sherlock with one last pointed look (which he ignores, snapping the magazine into place with a disdainful sniff) and hefting his knapsack onto his shoulder (water bottles to last the day, tinned rations for their lunch, medical kit, the distinct rattle of full pill bottles).

“John thought a fourth person might be nice, even things up a bit,” Emily says by way of explanation, smiling at Harry (who is still staring at her, wide-eyed) as they follow John out the front door and down to the waiting car. “Make sure everyone’s got someone to watch their back.”

(Oh.)

Harry blinks at her several times, eventually returns her smile.

(Of course: Emily was asked to join them to act as a companion for Harry (not John ( _relief, warmth, sunlight_ )) – but why does Harry require a companion? They’ve raided in groups of three before—)

Harry hangs back a moment (entirely unsubtle in how she allows Emily to move out of earshot before speaking), then reaches out and grabs Sherlock’s left wrist. “If you make _one_ lesbian joke on this trip, I swear on all that is holy...” She leaves it hanging, summing up with a fierce look up at his face and an extra squeeze on his wrist, but doesn’t try to hold on when Sherlock jerks his arm away with a snarl.

“As though I’ve nothing better to do than contemplate your sexual pastimes,” he retorts.

Up ahead, John is stowing the knapsack behind the driver’s seat, climbing into the back of the car while Emily takes the front passenger side. Harry pulls the car keys from her pocket with one last scowl up at him, and John turns to look back at him, waiting, a hint of a smile about his nose and mouth.

( _Oh._ )

Sherlock slides into the vacant half of the backseat, can’t help remarking on the two shortest people amongst them claiming the spots with the most ample leg room.

“Do you want to switch?” Emily asks, laughing.

Sherlock can see Harry glaring at him in the rear-view mirror as she starts the car (ink in his tea, scorpions in his bed, the sorts of things he used to leave in Mycroft’s room as a child when he was annoyed with him), and he settles back into his seat with a shake of his head (would only want to sit up there if John were driving, anyhow).

John rummages in the knapsack at his feet, pulls out a bottle of water and paracetamol, offers them to Sherlock. “You should take these before your shoulder gets any worse,” he says, doctor’s steel in his voice but softened with a smile (his fingers brush Sherlock’s palm, pressing the medication into his hand, warm, rough, lingering).

He swallows the pills and one fourth of the water, tries to ignore the deep ache already growing under the skin in his right shoulder.

(Answer to his earlier pondering seems obvious: John wishes to devote his undivided attention to watching Sherlock, does not want to be distracted due to having to keep an eye on Harry as well. (Employ caution: current circumstances may be misleading. Possibly missing key evidence that would suggest a different conclusion.))

In the front seat, Harry is making an awkward attempt at conversation with Emily (asking how Sasha’s schoolwork has progressed, dull), while the other woman smiles and responds graciously.

John bends to reach into his bag once more, and there’s the soft sound of paper tearing. Straightening, he reveals what appears to be the cover of a tawdry murder mystery (so-called), torn free of the rest of its book.

“Luckily, I’ve already finished this one,” he says, holding the cover art out to Sherlock with a grin. “Well, go on, tell me who the murderer is.”

Sherlock takes the stiff, ragged-edged paper, eyes sweeping over the melodramatic renderings of open-mouthed gasps and figures silhouetted in doorways, feels a smug smile already tugging at his own mouth (ready to please, to impress, to be _amazing_ ), feels John lean in, eager and waiting (attention focused solely on Sherlock).

(No other conclusions forthcoming at this time.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never used a Sig myself, but if it's anything like a nice little Glock, those things pack a _serious_ wallop. I'd take a rifle over a handgun any day of the week. P:


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John wasn’t the only one affected by their time apart. He wasn’t the only one targeted by a psychopath._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... am completely out of brainpower. No idea what I was going to say here, & don't have the energy to try to figure it out. Enjoy the chapter tho~ /crawls back into bed

John and Sherlock make their way inside the DIY shop where Harry had dropped them before she and Emily continued on to the Tesco to load up the boot with non-perishable food items and other general supplies to take back to the castle. The shop is dark and silent, sunlight filtering dimly through the dusty plate-glass windows at the front into the rows upon rows of hardware and tools. It appears to be deserted – but John still insists on doing a sweep of the building, instructing Sherlock to keep behind him while he checks that there are no undead surprises waiting for them in any of the back corners or offices. The detective pouts a little but does as he’s told, his footsteps a soft syncopated rhythm a pace and a half behind John’s own.

“All right,” John says at last, lowering his weapon once they’ve completed a full circuit of the shop and found it reassuringly empty. At Sherlock’s impatient look, he adds, “We wouldn’t want some zombie employees or managers sneaking up on us, now would we?”

“Zombies do not _sneak_ ,” Sherlock points out with a roll of his eyes, already moving up one lane to a display of electrical wiring. “Besides, the manager escaped with his life,” he says offhandly.

“What?” John blinks, snagging a trolley and following him. “How do you know?”

“Nameplates on the doors of the offices,” Sherlock replies. “The head manager’s office still had his business license and other certifications hanging on the wall, but patterns of dust on the desk indicate there’d previously been picture frames placed there, facing the manager’s chair.”

“His family photos,” John says, catching on, and Sherlock nods.

“Looters don’t take that sort of thing,” he says, “but people leaving their home for some reason seem to think it wise to allot their limited space, which could otherwise be used to carry necessities like water or ammunition, for useless, sentimental artefacts instead.”

John purses his lips, eyes still scanning the darkened shelves and aisles around them, thinks of the stack of old family photo albums Harry had brought with them, kept stuffed in the boot of the car for all those months before they found the castle, and of the single photograph that John had kept, a shot of Sherlock’s face illuminated by twinkling Christmas lights and his own hesitant smile, which is even now sitting in the topmost drawer of John’s chest of drawers back in his room.

“It gives people hope, I suppose,” John says, trying to keep his tone even, not go on the defensive, to meet Sherlock in the neutral zone of discussing people neither of them have ever met. There’s no reason this has to be personal; no reason it has to be about _them_. “An idea of something to build toward, something to fight for.” There’s no reason this should be making John think of months, years, of endless emptiness stretching out ahead of him until he either withered away as a shrivelled husk of himself or finally broke, cracked and made use of the one out he still had left, quick and bright and definitively over. He feels his fingers clamp convulsively around the Browning’s grip, draws in a deep breath, tries to keep the shaking out of his voice. “Otherwise, it can seem pretty pointless just… staying alive.” He shrugs.

Sherlock seems to stiffen at his words – and John instantly wants to kick himself. He has to remember, he has to remind himself – John wasn’t the only one affected by their time apart. He wasn’t the only one targeted by a psychopath.

“Always hated that song,” he grits out, voice tight, and he can see a muscle in Sherlock’s jaw jump as he clenches his teeth, before finally nodding.

A few quiet minutes go by, the only disruptions the clatter from Sherlock tossing wires and tools and odd bits of machinery that John can’t even identify into the basket, the pad of John’s boots as he paces, keeping watch, the soft creaks and howl of building and wind that John has come to associate with all of the many ghost towns they’ve passed through. Sherlock finishes with the first lane and begins working his way down a second, leaving John to trail behind with the trolley in tow.

Glancing toward the back corner of the shop once more, John clears his throat. “So,” he says, casual, and he can see Sherlock pausing, tensing at the break in the silence, looking up at John from the corner of his eye. He jerks his head toward the office doors sitting ajar behind them. “What else can you tell me about them?”

Sherlock relaxes minutely, and John is gratified to spot the beginnings of a smile curling at the corner of detective’s mouth before he launches into the familiar fast-paced list of facts and deductions gleaned from just this brief glimpse they’ve had into the lives of the people who came before them.

They spend another half hour inside the DIY shop. Sherlock keeps up a constant commentary on the habits of the shop’s staff and patrons alike, and John finds himself at times struggling to contain his laughter at the virulent disdain in his deep voice as he describes life in this small town before the plague, as if home repairs and lawn mower maintenance are the stuff of his nightmares. John keeps an eye out for movement outside while Sherlock works, listens for any signs of trouble from Harry and Emily at the Tesco a few streets away, gunshots or shouts for help – but no news is good news, and they’ll go to meet up with them once they’ve finished here.

When Sherlock announces that he’s collected everything he can use, they push their trolley full of— John honestly doesn’t even know. As far as he can see, there’s little, if any, difference between these parts and what the last few raids had brought back based on the lists Sherlock had written up. But the detective seems pleased with their haul, and his smile is infectious as they exit the shop.

“All right,” John says, scanning the surrounding area for signs of movement, of anything – living or dead –  that might have taken an interest in their re-emergence onto the pavement. “I’d better go first,” he says, looking back at Sherlock, then glances down at the full trolley. “Can you manage this?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes at John’s concern and leans his weight against the handlebar to push it out through the open door. “Obviously.”

John shakes his head, smiling to himself, and keeps one hand on the front end of the basket anyway, helping to pull it along so that Sherlock doesn’t strain his shoulder pushing its entire weight. His other hand holds the Browning out in front of himself in the low ready position, his eyes skimming across buildings and down side streets as they make their way toward the supermarket. The trolley’s wheels rattle loudly against the pavement, the noise echoing and rebounding off of the empty structures around them, and John feels his hackles rising, his skin crawling as if there are eyes watching them, hungry and waiting and drawn by their entirely _un_ tactical movement.

He feels his scalp prickle – intuition or soldier’s training or just years of experience fighting for his life – but either way John is ready when the attack comes: a herd of undead that come stumbling out of the cross-street just ahead, heads cocked to the sounds of life, of prey, and then they’ve been spotted and idle shambling turns into all out running, or as near to it as their half-rotted flesh can manage.

“Hold on,” John bites out, planting his feet and taking aim at the frontrunner.

“John—” He hears the trolley clamour to a halt, knows Sherlock is reaching for the handgun strapped to his hip.

“ _Don’t_ ,” John barks, and a third zombie falls with an explosion of brain matter and black, sickened blood. “I’ve _got_ this!”

Sherlock growls his frustration behind him, and John takes out the next two undead – but there are still more coming at them, more streaming out around the corner of the street, picking up the scent of the hunt and their fellows’ fervour.

“ _Shit_ ,” John grits out, fires off a few more shots – he’s used more than half of his clip already, and he reaches for the full one in the back pocket of his jeans, readies to switch them out – but there are too many of them, coming too fast, and he might not be able to—

“Oh, for _god’s sake_ ,” he hears Sherlock snarl, and then the detective is stepping up beside him, right arm fully extended and the Sig out in his hand.

“Sherlock—”

Sherlock ignores him, takes the shot, hits one of the corpses squarely between the eyes – but John doesn’t miss the wince of pain that flares across his pale face or how long it takes him to regain his aim.

John empties his magazine of its last few rounds and manages to replace it with the fresh one before the undead can get too close – but Sherlock’s arm is visibly shaking when John hazards a glance over at him, sweat breaking out across his forehead. “Would you— I’ve _got it,_ Sherlock, you can _stop_ —”

“I’m _fine!_ ” the detective snaps, but John can see him wobbling, and his next two shots glance uselessly off of shoulder and chest instead of skull or neck, the zombies continuing forward completely unperturbed.

“You’re going to _hurt_ yourself!” John insists, glaring over at him.

Sherlock shoots him a furious look – and then his eyes widen, and he swivels toward John even as John senses the threat drawing too close, allowed past their line of fire by his momentary distraction. He hears the guttural growl, the rattle of lungs filled with diseased fluid, can actually _smell_ it as he stumbles back, bringing his weapon to bear, sees Sherlock raising the Sig out of the corner of his eye, but his aim is still off, his arm weak and failing fast.

“ _John!_ ”

The shot comes out of nowhere. John sees the side of the zombie’s head explode outward not three feet from his face, its body careening sideways with the force of the blast to collapse, unmoving, at his feet.

John doesn’t allow himself to freeze, to stare into the face of the near-miss of his own mortality, simply raises the Browning again and shoots at the last few zombies still coming at them – but he’s not the only one. There are more shots, at right angles to he and Sherlock, two figures several buildings over, rifles raised and firing into the dwindling crowd of shambling corpses – _not Harry and Emily._

“You boys look like you’re having some trouble,” one of the men calls when the last of the zombies are on the ground, his voice raised, tone amiable, even jovial.

John feels himself tensing anew, doesn’t quite lower his gun, goes through a mental count of how many rounds he has left on him, how long it will take to retrieve and switch out the next full magazine when this one runs empty.

Beside him, Sherlock is clutching at his right arm, the Sig hanging down by his side, useless, pain written clearly across his expression. His gaze is locked on John’s face, but John doesn’t let himself look, doesn’t dare take his eyes off of the two men now strolling casually toward them.

“We’re managing,” John calls back, voice hard, stance firm, the Browning still at the ready in front of him. He feels Sherlock’s eyes finally flick away from him, toward the approaching pair, wonders what those eyes are seeing, what details the detective’s mind is picking out of them as his gaze sweeps over them.

“I dunno, you looked a bit overwhelmed,” the man continues, glancing at his comrade with a smile.

“That’s what it looked like from here,” his companion agrees, and the smirk he shoots toward them makes John’s blood run cold.

“But we were happy to help,” the first man adds, and the two stop a good thirty feet away. John doesn’t miss the fact that they’ve yet to fully lower their weapons.

“Well,” John says, hoping to god that he’s reading this wrong, hoping that this is nothing but the usual suspicion of the road, that they’ll all simply keep their weapons close at hand while they back away peaceably, no need to exchange fire, no need for more blood to be spilled. “We certainly appreciate it,” he says tightly. “And now that it’s over and done with, we’d best be on our way—”

“No, no, no,” the first man, the talker, the _leader_ , says, shaking his head, and he’s still got that sodding _smile_ on his face. “It’s rather rude to accept help without offering any sort of _repayment_ , don’t you think?”

John barely has time to draw in a breath to reply, is just starting to raise the Browning again when there’s the distinct sound of a shotgun being cocked, and two more figures step out from around the buildings across the street, forming a loose semi-circle with all weapons pointed in at John and Sherlock. They’re more than effectively surrounded.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” their leader says, grinning down the length of his rifle at them.

 


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Feels himself snarling, knows what comes after this, knows it only too well, can see it in the beady, hungry eyes of these stupid, pathetic excuses for homo sapiens._

“Car keys and your weapons and ammo,” Moron Number One says (still smirking, thinks he’s _so_ smart). “And, hell, we’ll take whatever’s in that backpack while you’re at it.”

“We don’t have car keys,” John says (slow, cautious, not making any sudden moves – even he can’t take out four shooters before they hit their mark).

“Do I look like an idiot?” ( _Yes_.) “We heard a car go by – or do you expect us to believe you walked here?” (They’d already been in the town (not settling in – disarray of their clothing and dust on their shoes say transients, passing through, merely stopped for supplies), observant enough to have heard the car drive past but not so much as to have heard it continue on to the supermarket; hadn’t moved on at the appearance of another group, hadn’t wanted to avoid a confrontation, had lain in wait, had _sought_ this.)

John clenches his teeth, hands flexing around his gun (if Sherlock’s right arm would _respond_ , if his body weren’t _entirely useless_ , then they might be able to fight their way out of this, with the both of them firing, fighting—)

“Come on,” the Prime Imbecile continues (overly fond of the sound of his own voice, elected himself Lord of the Cretins with little to no resistance from his lackeys, as he is the only one among them with even two brain cells to rub together – no older than thirty-two, worked in sales, accustomed to popularity and deference, previously married, going by the tan line where a wedding band used to sit wife likely alive but left him, probably had been able to ignore the fact she’d wed a monster up until the point their lives became entirely about survival of the fittest), “drop the bag and the guns, and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”

( _Feels himself snarling, knows what comes after this, knows it only too well, can see it in the beady, hungry eyes of these stupid, pathetic excuses for homo sapiens, even if they surrender peacefully – fists and boots if they’re lucky, bullets through their heads if they’re not, torment and sport if all the forces of nature and hell have gathered against them – and he cannot, he **will not** see that happen to John—_ )

Sherlock can see John thinking about it, going through their options in his head, a multitude of strategies imagined and discarded in the space of a moment, can see when he accepts that they have no choice.

(He tries again to raise his right hand, succeeds only in making his arm quiver, a new bolt of unadulterated agony lancing through him, nearly loses his grip on the Sig.)

Very slowly, his eyes never leaving those of the grinning idiot across from him, John releases one hand from around the Browning’s grip, reaching up and back toward the strap of his knapsack, about to pull it off.

( _No no no **no!**_ )

Then, something odd happens:

The sound of a gunshot splits the air (Sherlock does _not_ flinch, but his eyes fly over John’s frame, searching for blood, for injury, for any sign that he’s been hit).

And then, in almost the same moment, one of the four men surrounding them falls to the ground with a bright red spray and a widening stain across his torso.

John freezes, then lunges backward, grabbing a fistful of Sherlock’s sleeve as more shots ring out (rifles, a matched pair, coming from off to their right, from two different alleyways leading toward the Tesco – Harry and Emily, strategically placed to lay down covering fire – of course, they’d have heard the shots earlier, they’ve come to their aid, of course, obviously, _finally_ ). He’s nearly yanked off his feet as John drags him back behind the corner of a building, taking shelter behind solid brick and concrete as their would-be attackers scramble about in confusion, trying (and failing, honestly, how difficult can it be?!) to locate the source of the gunfire.

“Are you all right?!” John barks, all but shoving Sherlock back against the side of the building (words sound like an order at first, not a question, John taking command, and Sherlock _can’t think_ , he can’t feel anything but the pain and John’s palm against his chest, pressing into his breastbone, strong and warm). “ _Sherlock_. Are you—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Sherlock grits out, “fine.” (But he can feel his knees wobbling, his vision bleeding white around the edges as his shoulder flares. The fingers of his left hand dig into the flesh of his upper arm, the pressure doing nothing to alleviate the pain but at least supplying the illusion that he’s not about to explode outward, burst apart into a million burning pieces with the force of the blaze in his shoulder.) After a moment (watching Sherlock’s face, sceptical, weighing urgent and important demands on his attention at the moment), John turns away, glancing furtively around the corner with his weapon ready to fire, to kill.

A bullet whizzes past John’s head (four feet too far to the right, disappears into the opposite wall with a puff of cement dust, but far, far too close), and he can hear more shots ringing through the air, Harry and Emily and their enemies all returning fire, John adding his own to the cacophony (like a scene out of that terrible American Western film John had once forced him to sit through – John had drunk more beer than usual that evening and Sherlock had had too much wine, all in the name of surviving this assault on his intellect of course, and then John had been imitating the ridiculous drawling accent of the dusty vaqueros on the screen as he crowded Sherlock into the corner of the sofa, refusing to dignify any of Sherlock’s critiques with an actual response but somehow managing to wring incredulous, giddy laughter out of him with his preposterous, insistent impersonations – he can still remember the feel of the wine’s flush climbing up his neck, the sight of John’s eyes so close up, the distinct ridges  and swirls of mixing blues and flecks of gold in his irises, the feel of his breath ghosting across Sherlock’s cheek—)

( _Focus!_ )

John is squeezing his shoulder, the left one, shaking him slightly. “Sherlock. _Sherlock_. We need to move.”

Outside of their little safe space, the fight has quieted. Beneath the rush of the wind between the buildings, Sherlock can make out noises of movement, little signs that most people somehow miss, hear but never isolate or identify: the quiet padding of feet (discernible limp in at least one pair; patter of liquid hitting pavement, equally possible blood or stray raindrops from the low-hanging clouds above), the clatter of weapons and ammunition being replenished, a command uttered in a terse whisper, bodies moving, scrambling, the clang of boots on metal rungs.

“They’re climbing up on top of the buildings,” Sherlock says, and John nods. The sounds are coming from multiple directions, though, twisting and echoing off of the architecture around them, impossible to pin down in his current state.

“We don’t have any real cover here,” John says, pulling the Sig out of Sherlock’s shaking grasp and slipping it back into its holster at his side, “not if they can get an aerial shot. Come on—” And he pushes Sherlock ahead of him, deeper into the alley, his hand never leaving Sherlock’s back as they go. 

They skirt around the edge of the building (small bookstore, blue door, spattered with months-old blood). John checks the next street for movement before cautiously stepping out, keeping his back against the front windows as he leads them toward a deep shop entryway, the arching stone ceiling offering protection from above and the plate glass doors showing the shop within dark and deserted. John pulls Sherlock into the shadows, presses him into the back corner where brickwork meets glass, briefly holsters his gun to run sure, careful hands up Sherlock’s arms.

“How bad?” he asks, and Sherlock hisses as John’s fingers palpate around the joint, feeling for new damage beneath the scar tissue, for dislocation.

“I’ll survive,” he grunts, gritting his teeth, looks over John’s shoulder out at the street, watches for movement. (Tingling in his hand, sharp stabs of pain deep into the bone structure, wider ache throbbing in his deltoid and pectoral.)

John sighs. “You’ve probably subluxed it something awful. Can you lift at all?”

“Do you really think this is the best use of your time at this particular moment?” Sherlock snaps, and manages to flex his right hand, roll his wrist.

John frowns up at him, rough fingers slipping under his elbow, gently raising Sherlock’s arm. His eyes are hard and very dark blue. “If something happens to me—”

“Don’t be _ridiculous_ ,” Sherlock sneers, throws his head back into the wall ( _cannot consider such a possibility, cannot, **will not** , never, he will **not** allow it_ ).

“—you’d be helpless,” John continues with a glare, talking over Sherlock as he rotates his arm. “I’m not about to leave you—”

His shoulder gives an audible _pop_ , and Sherlock gasps, his snarled demand that John shut up with this _idiocy_ lost in the hiss of air between his teeth. Relief (of the physical sort only) floods him, sensation washing down through his arm, numbness receding, and he can feel control beginning to return to the limb at last.

“—to fend for yourself one-handed,” John finishes, and moves Sherlock’s arm through a few last slow circles before lowering it at last back to his side. “I can’t be worrying about you right now.” He looks up at Sherlock’s face again, and (miraculously, stunningly) there is a wry smile on John’s face (warmth spreading outward from Sherlock’s middle, bleeding through his clothing where John’s hand is still resting on his arm), an old spark in his eyes that Sherlock’s not seen in months, a year, a lifetime (bullets flying past them, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, locked room murders, giggling over crime scenes, a second pair of footsteps pounding after his own). “Not any more than usual, anyway,” John grins.

“John,” Sherlock breathes.

There’s a sound of shuffling, not-quite-hidden movement from atop one of the buildings across the road – human, alive, trying to be stealthy, trying to circle around and catch them from behind. John turns away again, planting his shoulder against the edge of the wall, glancing carefully around the corner for their pursuer. “Don’t even think about it,” he says when Sherlock curls his fingers experimentally around the Sig’s grip again, without so much as looking back at him (heard the movement, the rustle of nylon and metal, or merely able to predict Sherlock’s behaviour, his desire to rejoin the fray?)

Sherlock snorts, relinquishes his hold on the weapon to roll his shoulder again (worst of the immediate pain abated, but the ache still present and gradually intensifying; unlikely to experience any significant relief until they are able to return to the castle and he can drown out the fire with his usual means).

“Emily shot and killed one of them,” he states, running over the scene of the standoff in his mind (separate the facts from his moment of panic then, from the flash of terror that John would be the one to fall to the ground with a bullet through his chest: both women carry rifles, Emily’s of a larger calibre, easily identifiable by auditory cues once the memory has been stripped clean of unruly emotions; they’d split up upon approaching John and Sherlock’s position, placing themselves at angles to fire into the crowd without being in too great a danger of striking either John or himself; laid down enough covering fire to allow them the opportunity to seek cover; a nearly textbook execution of a squad assault (John’s influence, instilling a sense of military combat strategy into the castle’s population, though Sherlock doesn’t know if by mere association or by overt lessons (would very much like to watch John conduct such lessons, issue orders, pull rank))).

“And I got another one before they scattered,” John confirms, still scanning the street, waiting for their foe to appear. “Think Harry hit the leader in the leg too.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “This isn’t him, though.”

“Wouldn’t be able to climb a fire escape very easily, now would he?” John agrees, and Sherlock can hear that he’s grinning.

The shot comes a second later, and John ducks back inside the entryway, and there is indeed a smile on his face when he looks back at Sherlock, wide and dangerous and Sherlock feels an answering smirk on his own face (running, leaping, laughing, _come on, John!_ )

“What do you think?” John asks, and just barely waves his arm into view around the corner of the wall again, is rewarded with a second shot that hits nowhere near its intended target. “Feel like calculating a trajectory for me?”

“Oh, if you insist,” Sherlock grins, eyes already taking in the small shattered spots in wall and pavement where the bullets impacted, easily noting the type of ammunition and ricochet patterns  and the untrained weave to the shooter’s aim, traces the shots backward through the air, lines converging, leading to—

John huffs quietly as Sherlock leans into him, around him, just enough to confirm his estimate and set his eyes on their target.

“Second building to the left,” he says confidently, rolling back into his spot in the corner, leaning against the cool glass doors with their dark, empty shop behind him. “The pub.”

John tilts out a little way, squints, flinches slightly as the man takes another (inept) shot – but then John is raising the Browning and returning fire and everything is very, very quiet afterward.

(Sherlock smiles to himself, can almost feel the weight of the poison pill against his fingertips, the whistle of air as the bullet shoots straight through two panels of glass, past him, and into the psychotic little man trying to goad him into suicide.)

“That’s the third one,” John says, turning back around, “now we’ve just got the last wanker to deal with and we’re home free.”

Sherlock hums in acknowledgement, in agreement (can feel that he’s still smiling, smug, really rather unreasonably content in this moment, perfectly assured that wherever said Chief Wanker has limped off to, he is hardly a threat to them with John here (will not be a threat to _anyone_ when Sherlock’s done with him ( _you don’t get to threaten Sherlock Holmes’ loved ones and continue to walk the face of the earth_ )), when they’re very nearly literally running after killers together, tracking down the scum of society and without even the tediousness of police reports and paperwork afterward to spoil the warm glow that’s suffusing him as John smiles up at him—)

—And then John seems to tense (eyes widening, smile falling away, mouth going slack, cold) and suddenly all Sherlock can see is the muzzle of the Browning pointed at his face.

( _Force not unlike being struck by a moving vehicle, not unlike coming to a sudden stop after stepping off the roof of a very tall building, hot metal tearing through flesh, setting him on fire, setting him spinning, disoriented, the ground rising up to meet him, sudden warm wetness escaping across his skin, his life slipping away, and John, John there, right in front of him, filling his view, John, John aiming at him, John shooting, John angry, so angry to see Sherlock, no matter what he does—_ )

He’s caught up in the sense memory, can’t seem to recall how to breathe, how to move, almost doesn’t hear the next two words out of John’s mouth:

“Vatican cameos!”

 


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And John thinks he finally, really, truly, understands._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, all my thanks and appreciation go out to GlassCannon for her unflinching betaing and tireless hand-holding, as well as for her lessons in the the ways of angst (if your feels have been left a bit bruised by any particular parts of this fic, it is honestly most likely her fault); and to Madame_Mary, whose advice in the ways of all things British and medical have been utterly indispensable in making this fic what it is today.

“That’s the third one,” John says, lowering his weapon as he turns back around to look at Sherlock. “Now we’ve just got the last wanker to deal with and we’re home free.” He takes in Sherlock’s proud, almost proprietary gaze from where he’s leaning back against the shop’s glass doors, all long lines and languid roughness, royalty unshaven and dressed in pauper’s garb, feels something flip over in his stomach, barely resists the urge to blow nonexistent smoke from the end of his gun. Sherlock isn’t the only one who enjoys the occasional chance to show off, after all.

Sherlock hums quietly in response to John’s words, in that way that he has when he’s listening but his mind is clearly on something else, eyes still fixed on John’s face even as the great storm of his intelligence is crashing around some other thought or puzzle, something John can’t fathom or even likely imagine.

And that’s when he sees movement behind Sherlock.

In the next few seconds, time seems to slow around them, a rushing river suddenly icing over, fluid turning to sharp, unyielding solid. The shop beyond the doors is dark, daylight filtering dimly through filthy glass to silhouette rows of shelves and hanging racks, unidentifiable merchandise lying long abandoned. Zombie, John thinks at first, because of the uneven lurching motion as the figure comes into view, drawn toward the outside light and all the noise they’ve been making.

But zombies don’t carry weapons, and they sure as hell don’t raise them to aim rather adeptly at the back of Sherlock’s head.

John reacts instinctively, the Browning snapping up in his hands, ready to take the shot, to rid the world of this sorry excuse of a man who has no earthly idea who he’s fucked with, just as soon as Sherlock’s out of the way, out of danger—

Sherlock has frozen, his eyes wide and colourless, blood draining quickly from his already pale face, staring at John – no, not at John, at the muzzle of his gun, the same gun he’d been shot with not three months previous, and bugger if John doesn’t know a post-traumatic attack when he sees it, the sort of flashback that claws its way up your insides out of nowhere, out of the darkest, most deeply buried caverns of your consciousness, overtaking you without warning and drowning out everything else around you, leaving you with nothing to think or feel but the sensation of shrapnel tearing through your flesh, fire spreading under your skin outward, searing blackness, blankness, and the absolute, concrete knowledge that you are going to die.

John can remember those times, knows exactly what’s going on behind that haunted, panicked look on Sherlock’s face, remembers the days when it was all he could do to haul himself out of bed, to not curl up in a quivering mass inside his empty little bedsit, hiding away from all the careless, pointless, violent noise of the civilian world that didn’t, _couldn’t_ , understand – but he remembers even more clearly the moment when a wily consulting detective had stepped into his life, taking John’s mobile phone and with it his loyalty, instantaneously and unexpectedly filling the gaping wide hole that had been expanding steadily under John’s feet, groundwork collapsing to swallow up his entire life until Sherlock Holmes had invited him to come look at a flat and a crime scene.

He can see Sherlock closing off, shutting down, just as John had been doing those years ago before Sherlock had found him and reached out, reached into the dark, purposeless corner where John had been huddled and pulled him back out into the living, breathing light of day – and John wants nothing more in this instant than to reach Sherlock like that, to pull him free of the nightmare he’s reliving, but his life comes first, saving Sherlock’s life has to be John’s first priority. He’ll make amends afterward, will do anything and everything in his power to comfort Sherlock, to apologise and make up for the emotional trauma he’s wreaked, both now and over the last few months, but right now, right now he _needs_ to do this, it’s all useless if he lets Sherlock get killed, right in front of him, all of it lost, everything they’ve worked and fought for, the idea of a future spreading out before them stolen away in the blink of an eye because of a madman who wants to ruin them both—

 _Oh_.

He hears Sherlock’s voice, garbled with wind and static and what John will swear to his dying day were tears, pleading, begging, _“Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?_ ”

And John thinks he finally, really, truly, understands.

He also thinks he might just know what to do here.

John bites the words out, all but flings them through the air, hoping against all odds that the familiarity and the shared memories will be able to penetrate the fog of terror currently choking Sherlock’s awareness, to shake him out of his shocked stupor and let him know that John is _here_ , that he’s not going anywhere, that Sherlock’s not alone, that he won’t be left to fight his way out of this on his own: “Vatican cameos!”

Sherlock blinks, his eyes clearing just slightly, just _enough_ , and then he drops, hits the deck – and John shoots.

The glass doesn’t shatter, but what little shrapnel is left in the bullet’s wake flies inward with it, leaving a nearly clean hole in the middle of the door through which John watches the man’s throat explode with a wide spray of blood and ruptured flesh, before he crumples, rifle falling from his limply jerking hands, killing round unspent.

John shoves his weapon, still hot from the expelled bullet, back into its holster, is on his knees in the next breath, hauling Sherlock up by his arms, distantly aware of the hail of apologies already falling from his lips, both at the hiss of pain Sherlock gives as he flinches and draws his right arm away, and at the thought of what they’ve been through in the last months, what John’s put them through. He hadn’t understood, hadn’t realised all that Sherlock had done for him, for them both, even after he found out the truth of what happened that day, he hadn’t been able to fully contemplate the raw desperation of the act through the haze of his own grief and anger. They’d certainly faced death plenty of times before, and John knew quite well that there was little, if anything, he wouldn’t do for Sherlock, that he’d have chewed off his own arm if it in some way contributed to keeping Sherlock alive and safe. John would have sacrificed himself without a moment’s hesitation, without even the slightest regret.

He just hadn’t realised until now that the feeling could be mutual.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock is panting, “I’m all right.” But he’s not pulling away, and John finally gives up his half-crazed search for injury, for any sign that the gunshot had done more than ruffle Sherlock’s hair as it blew past over his head, instead wraps his arms around the still-too-thin torso and holds on tight.

“ _Bloody hell_ , Sherlock,” he gasps.

Sherlock lets out a shuddering breath and seems to go boneless in John’s arms, his face pressing into the curve of John’s neck and shoulder. He’s shaking, trembling subtly, adrenaline and fear still lingering just under the surface, a chaotic jumble of emotions that John knows only too well. He lets one of his hands reach up to card through Sherlock’s hair, fingers tangling in unruly dark curls, stroking, soothing, while his other arm continues to hold, to try to pull him in that bit closer, to meld them together if he could, to never, ever, let go of him again. And Sherlock doesn’t make a single sound in protest, doesn’t once try to pull out of John’s grasp.

John doesn’t know how long they sit there, honestly doesn’t care, but after some interminable amount of time he recognises the pounding of approaching footsteps, two pair, small, jogging down the street toward their little alcove.

Sherlock sighs again, sounding better, a bit more like his normal exasperated, long-suffering self, and then gently pulls back to sit on his heels.

John studies him, one hand still lingering on the detective’s left arm, unwilling to completely relinquish the physical connection, even if he is toeing a dangerous line here, flirting with the idea of something that one of them has said he doesn’t want – but Sherlock hasn’t shrugged him off, hasn’t pushed him away, and John will quite happily take whatever he can get. “Hey,” he says, and draws Sherlock’s attention back to him, even as he hears the footsteps drawing closer, Harry and Emily coming to find them. “We’re all right, yeah?”

Quicksilver eyes dart over his face, reading and cataloguing motives and thoughts and all manner of details John can’t even conceive of, and then Sherlock swallows and nods. “Yes. Of course.”

John smiles, his thumb tracing an idle circle on Sherlock’s sleeve, tells himself he’s keeping that hand there to help steady them as they both climb to their feet. But then Harry appears around the corner, rifle still in her hands, and lets out a happy squawk to see them both alive and well. John turns to greet her, then Emily, right on her heels, and he allows his hand to fall away at last – but he can’t help feeling a new, acute awareness of Sherlock’s presence, of the warmth radiating off of him as he stands perhaps closer than usual at John’s side as they exchange stories with the two women, crowding into John’s space a little more than is typical as they trek back to get the car and the abandoned trolley of Sherlock’s supplies from the DIY shop, and the pained, almost beseeching looks he shoots John’s way whenever he thinks John’s not looking.

They pack everything away in the boot, preparing at last for the drive back to the castle, and John slides into the backseat just in time to catch another of those _looks_ from Sherlock.

Trying to hide his smile, John pats the middle seat as Harry fires up the engine. “Come on,” he says at Sherlock’s confused – all right, maybe even a little suspicious – expression, and reaches for his shoulder with one hand, “why don’t we see if we can make this feel a touch better – at least until we can get home and get some better painkillers in you.”

Sherlock blinks, his brows rising slightly, and then, apparently catching on, he flops enthusiastically down onto his left side across the seat, his head resting on John’s thigh and his right shoulder presented in perfect position for a good hearty massage. John huffs a laugh, shaking his head, and sets about carefully kneading the taut, abused muscles as Sherlock melts against him like an alley cat luxuriating in the feel of gentle hands for the first time, all but purring his pleasure.

He ignores Harry’s smug, knowing glance in the rear-view mirror along with Emily’s soft, approving smile, ignores them all in favour of the strange, amazing, utterly unique creature under his hands and the bright sphere of joy that’s lodged itself somewhere in the vicinity of John’s diaphragm, burning white hot and growing, spreading outward, a new star being born, a solar system centred entirely around one Sherlock Holmes, and it doesn’t matter if the detective in question would scoff and roll his eyes at the uselessness of this comparison, the irrelevance of whether the earth goes round the sun or round and round the garden, because John’s world orbits around him, always has and always will, if he has anything to say about it.

“Are you going to listen to me in future when I tell you to take it easy on this arm?” John demands quietly, mock irritation in his voice because he knows already that _that’s_ a lost cause, but he doesn’t intend to ever stop looking after this marvellous nutter.

Sherlock gives a happy little hum in response, practically rubbing his cheek against John’s leg, and John thinks he might just burst with unadulterated bliss.

Maybe it won’t ever be all that John had imagined, tawdry, passionate things he’d allowed himself to dream up in the middle of the night, but Sherlock is here – he’s here, he’s real, he’s alive, and he’s happy. They’re both happy, and they’re going to be all right. They’re going to be just fine.

And, really, that’s all that John can ask for, all that he could ever want.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, as they say, is that.
> 
> TDBTD is now complete, but the story is far from over. Those who've been reading since the very beginning might distantly recall a time when this fic was marked to have 50 chapters total. That was what my original outline had indicated, and what I'd fully expected: 50 chapters, maybe around 100k words all told, nice and neat with a bow on top. 
> 
> **The 47 chapters and ~80k words here are the first ⅓ of my original story plan.**
> 
> As sometimes happens, this fic has grown and expanded far more than I'd ever anticipated, both for the sake of plot and pacing and because of certain characters who wouldn't shut up once I got them on the page (coughHarrycough), and so I recently made the decision to split it into a series with three parts. I'm going to take some time off to work on Part 2 and then I'll be back with a nice buffer of finished chapters and once more uninterrupted updates.
> 
> I want to thank each and every one of you who've read and followed this story so far, whether you left comments or kudos or just quietly kept coming back each week for more ~~abuse~~. You've all brightened my day more times than I can count; believe me when I say your various cheerleading, encouragement, and enthusiasm has been a driving force in getting this story to the point it is. I have sincerely enjoyed spending the last six months with you all and I hope I'll see you back in a month or two for the next stage of John  & Sherlock's story. 
> 
> ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Book cover for The Dead Bury Their Dead by Jezunya](https://archiveofourown.org/works/768531) by [catonspeed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catonspeed/pseuds/catonspeed)




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